Lena Archuleta

Lena Lovato Archuleta
Educator, Community Activist
1920 - 2011
INDUCTED 1985

For more than 30 years, Lena Archuleta served the Hispanic community in Colorado as teacher, school librarian, administrator, and community volunteer.

Lena was a woman who always strived to be “first in the class:” first Hispanic female principal in the Denver Public Schools, first woman to serve as president of the Latin American Education Foundation, first Hispanic president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, and first Latina inductee into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame. Born on a small ranch in rural New Mexico, Lena took pride in teaching others about Colorado’s rich Hispanic traditions and culture. She enriched and transformed the whole community in the process.

“I was comfortable with who I am, . . . that I would be able to live as a bicultural, bilingual woman wherever life would take me.” — Lena Archuleta