Luis Lucero-Tacuri ’22 first thought he was in trouble when an administrator emailed him early in the semester asking to talk. The school counseling student and newly installed president of the Graduate Student Organization (GSO) figured he must have run afoul of some rule or other in the position he was still getting acquainted with.
Then came the ask: Will you give the opening remarks at an upcoming rally that Sen. Bernie Sanders was hosting on campus?
“My heart left my body,” he recalled. “I didn’t say yes immediately; I called my mom. She said, ‘Do it. You worked your whole life for opportunities like this.’”
Still, Lucero-Tacuri had never dreamed of a moment like this.
He was born and raised in Brooklyn on the edge of Borough Park. His parents sold Ecuadorian food out of a truck, and because they couldn’t afford child care, Lucero-Tacuri and his older sister spent afternoons and nights with them doing homework in the food cart, translating, and taking small orders.
The experience taught him about hard work and kept him connected to a culture he didn’t see reflected at his school. It also sometimes led to friction with his teachers, many of whom never fathomed that the sleepy kid in class was up late because his parents didn’t have other options.
“To constantly get yelled at for being tired just made me feel embarrassed and ashamed,” he said. “Nobody thought to ask what was going on at home. Looking back, I think that’s a big part of what pushed me to work in education. I want to be the person who gets to know the whole child.”
The Counselor He Never Had
Lucero-Tacuri ended up following his older sister, now a teacher, to Brooklyn College and studied childhood education as an undergraduate. But during student teaching, something didn’t fit. He watched a student—one of the only Black students in the classroom—constantly get scolded for missing homework. It took him back to his own childhood.
“I realized I cared most about the social-emotional piece,” he said. “The why, the barriers at home, the resources students need.”
He added psychology as a second major and pivoted to school counseling for his graduate studies. He’s currently interning at both an elementary and a high school and frequently uses his Spanish to connect with students and families.
“I want to be the counselor I didn’t have—the adult who asks, ‘Are you okay? What do you need?’” he said. “Students aren’t checklists. They’re whole people with families and stories, and sometimes they’re carrying more than we can see. I want to meet them there.”
Work Ethic, Family First, Resilience
His college years have been full of new and exciting experiences: Presenting at a conference in Poland with three of his school counseling peers; working as a social media assistant at CUNY TV; participating in the NYC Men Teach program; being elected to lead the GSO, a perch that made him—the child of immigrants with an American dream story to tell—a great choice to introduce the political giant.
He wove his story into his remarks. On the ride to campus, he and his sister reflected on how far they were from those food truck days.
“I kept reminding myself: you’re not terrified; you’re excited. When I finally spoke, it felt like a blur,” he said. “I never imagined that one day I’d be introducing a sitting U.S. Senator in front of a huge crowd. It was a dream I didn’t know I had.”
His parents had always told him and his siblings that if they wanted a better life, education was key. “They would tell me, ‘study hard so you don’t end up like us,’” he said. “I thought about that a lot recently. The thing is, I want to be just like them: Strong work ethic, family first, resilient.”
It’s a realization that taught him that success isn’t just about titles and academic or career accomplishments. It’s about values. That’s a lesson he hopes to impart to the students he works with.
“Education is about…preparing the next generation to lead with knowledge, integrity, and compassion,” he said from the stage that night. “Education doesn’t just open doors, it transforms lives, families, and futures.”