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Tanya Cabrera stops students in the halls at Benito Juarez Community Academy in Pilsen. She asks them about their college essays, tells them to study more instead of working part-time and makes sure students’ summer program applications arrive on time. As post-secondary education coach, Cabrera, 30, works to get more Hispanic students into college after graduating from Juarez, where most students are immigrants or the children of immigrants.

Only 43 percent of Hispanic graduates from the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) finish college in six years, according to a report by the University of Chicago. However, the national average is 47 percent. CPS data showed 27 percent of Juarez graduates either enroll in college or post-secondary education. “You all are the ones who can change those statistics,” Cabrera told a group of eighth graders visiting Juarez on last month. She said she will help get them into college regardless of immigration status.

“With documents or without documents, we can do it.” Diana Izquierdo, 17, and ranked number one in her senior class, may be college-bound but is one of many undocumented students at Juarez. “There are a lot of limits on us and a lot of closed doors,” she said. Cabrera also help students navigate the college entrance process and finding schools that will give scholarships to non-citizens to make up for the lack of federal aid, added Izquierdo

Cabrera also manages donations and fundraisers to give scholarships to undocumented students. She helps them enter programs such as Summer Quest, which pays most of the costs for Chicago public high school students to study abroad for the summer– including Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“You don’t have to have a social security number to apply,” she said. At a recent workshop about college financial aid forms that Cabrera planned, she explained the application process to students and their parents, many of whom did not attend college. She had also invited Luis Gutierrez, executive director of Latinos Progresando, a Pilsen legal services and advocacy organization, to educate students about their legal status as undocumented students.

Gutierrez said he was impressed that Cabrera made sure students came from other high schools as well as Juarez. Cabrera is one of only a few people in Pilsen devoted to expanding educational options for Hispanic students, Gutierrez said. “If you had a baseball team, she’d be one of the all-stars.” “What’s unusual is to find someone who has the brains, heart and passion,” he said.

“Someone who can bring people together and make it look so easy.” In addition to attending college, Gutierrez also encourages undocumented students to advocate for their rights. “We’re hoping by the time they get through college we’ll have something like the DREAM Act passed.” Juarez students are joining other undocumented students in Chicago to urge Sen. Dick Durbin, (D-IL), to continue to support the federal DREAM Act, which would allow some undocumented students who immigrated to the U.S. as children to become citizens.

Cabrera helps the students weigh the benefits and consequences of their organizing. Cabrera’s passion for Hispanic empowerment was fostered as she grew up in the Pilsen community by her family, especially her cousin Sandy, who is several years older. During visits home while attending Northern Illinois University, Sandy educated the family on political issues. Cabrera became a campus activist as well. She especially supported farm unions since her father was a United Farm Workers organizer in the 1970s. “I still don’t buy grapes unless they’re union,” she said. Martín Cabrera, her father, was also involved in the fight in the 1970s to build a better high school in Pilsen.

Their victory came when Juarez opened in 1977. A few of the older teachers at the school remember him, Cabrera said. “They say I’ve got my mother’s looks and my father’s mouth.” After Cabrera’s father died in a car accident when she was 10, her family moved to the Little Village neighborhood. At Bogan High School, she started out with good grades, but they slipped and she dropped out for several months during her sophomore year. She graduated in 1994.

During college, she transferred numerous times among six colleges before receiving her bachelor’s degree in history from Northern Illinois University in 2001. Michael Barajas, 17, a senior at Juarez said Cabrera is open with students about her own struggles during high school and college. “She tells us that college is possible for anybody.” Cabrera pushes students to succeed and challenge stereotypes about Hispanics and undocumented immigrants, Barajas said.

Discrimination against Hispanics continues when they enter colleges and universities, Cabrera said. When she was a swimmer at the University of Wisconsin Madison, several of her teammates once smeared beans on her locker. In October, students who graduated from Juarez and now attend the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign told Cabrera about a tequila and taco party hosted by a fraternity and sorority. “They dressed up as migrant workers, girls who were pregnant, gang bangers.” She had advised the students not to fight, but instead go through the university’s disciplinary process on racism. “If you’re going to hit them, hit them with paperwork.”

Advocating for young people is a lifelong habit for Cabrera, beginning with her two brothers. “I was always worried about [them] getting involved in gangs.” She often defended her epileptic older brother from teasing, until he died when Cabrera was 18. She continues to be protective of her younger brother, Martin Cabrera Jr. He is now the owner and president of Cabrera Capital Markets Inc., one of the few Hispanic-owned brokerage and investment banking firms in the U.S.