About The Founder

Dr. Leonor Xóchitl Pérez is the Founder and Executive Director of the Mariachi Women’s Foundation, the first organization to focus on the advancement of women in the male-dominated mariachi genre. She is also the founder and director of the first International Mariachi Women’s Festival that, since 2014, brings mariachi women’s groups and performers from all over the world to Los Angeles. To date, Dr. Pérez has produced and directed eleven mariachi women’s festivals in Los Angeles. She is recognized for her pioneering research on the history of women in mariachi music and has presented this research at universities, municipalities and organizations internationally. Her most recent presentations were in Mexico at the Universidad de Guadalajara’s Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades in 2025 and in August of the same year at the Mariachi Women’s Festival held in the cities of Ciudad Valles and Axtla de Terrazas in San Luis Potosí. She also presented her research at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in 2024. In January of 2027, she will be traveling to Universidad Alberto Hurtado in Santiago, Chile to present her latest research.

She first learned mariachi violin at 12 years of age in East Los Angeles. Her mariachi teacher was Jesus Sanchez a Mexican mariachi musician and immigrant who worked with some of the most recognized pioneering mariachis such as Perla de Occidente. Sanchez migrated to the U.S. and worked in the fields of California before he was recruited in the 1960s by UCLA to become the the first native Mexican mariachi teacher in a U.S. school.

She has performed with mariachi groups in California and Washington D.C. and performed for two Presidential inaugural balls. She was also a founding member of the prestigious Mariachi Mujer 2000 with which she performed at the Hollywood Bowl. Another professional highlight was her two-year collaboration with the San Diego Symphony and composer Bill Conti, best known for composing the theme for the film “Rocky.” Their collaboration culminated with an original composition Your Song Your Story co-created with San Diego County’s multicultural artists.

Dr. Pérez is known for her seminal book chapter, “Transgressing the Taboo: A Chicana’s Voice in the Mariachi World” (2002). It was the first published academic work to explore gender in the predominately-male mariachi tradition. She has presented her original research on the history of women in mariachi music at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. It first received international recognition in 2013 when her work was recognized in a publication produced by the Mexican Consulate in San Diego. Since then, she has given academic presentations on this research at the world conferences of the International Council for Traditions of Music & Dance at universities in Kazakhstan (2015), Ireland (2017), Thailand (2019) and New Zealand (2025).

Her traveling exhibit, The Trailblazing Women of Mariachi Music, which reverses the erasure of over 100 years of mariachi women’s history, has been displayed at museums, performing arts centers and colleges in California, Texas, Colorado, and Arizona. She held a lobby exhibit on this history for the debut opening of the play American Mariachi, written by Jose Cruz, at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts in Colorado and the Old Globe Theatre at Balboa Park in San Diego, CA (2018). It was also the inaugural exhibit for the opening of the Mexican American Heritage and History Museum at the historic Sosa-Carillo House in Tucson, Arizona (2019).

Her engagement in cultural production first began as a child through her voice recordings for the nation’s first bilingual education animated films created by John Sutherland Productions. As an adolescent, she engaged artistically with organizations in Los Angeles that became culturally significant such as Plaza de La. Raza and Self-Help Graphics. It was through the support of the Media Arts Education Program at Plaza that, upon graduating from Garfield High School, Dr. Pérez accepted a competitive journalism internship with the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation in Washington D.C. During her time as an intern and in her five years in Washington, she performed with Mariachi Los Amigos led by Dr. Dan Sheehy who was the Folk Arts Director for the National Endowment for the Arts.

In addition to her background in arts and culture, Dr. Pérez has also had an extensive career as a college administrator and faculty. She has worked as a Dean at East Los Angeles college, an administrator at the Harvard Medical School, a program evaluator for the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, an educational consultant for two tribal colleges in South Dakota and has taught at UCLA, Harvard, and San Diego State University. Dr. Pérez holds a BA in psychology and a PhD in Higher Education and Organizational Change from UCLA as well as a Master’s Degree in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University.

Through education and the arts, Dr. Pérez has served the community at large while never leaving her roots and continuing to serve the East Los Angeles community where she was raised.