Meet your new IDEEA Chair: Antonio Estrella Vega

Meet Antonio - Your IDEEA Chair


Hello WASFAA Community! My name is Antonio Estrella Vega, and I am really excited to coordinate the IDEEA committee this year. As many of us start or get ready to start a new academic year, I would like to introduce myself and what belonging, inclusion, and community mean to me through ten questions:

  1. Why is this role important to you personally?

A phrase famously attributed to Newton says, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” I constantly remind myself of how fortunate I am to benefit from the hard work of those who came before me. Serving as the IDEEA chair this year is a full-circle moment and an opportunity to build upon that work and help foster a community in which every person feels seen, included, and valued.

  1. If the IDEEA Committee had a theme song, what would it be and why?

In my conversations with Carlos about IDEEA, there was always an underlying notion of IDEEA as a forum of conversation, learning, and collaboration. Then, one of my Summer Institute friends said, “Well, all we can do is make sure that we welcome everyone with open arms!”  And then my idea of a space where we can come together, share stories, laughs, and just decompress are the main topics that I associate with the IDEEA committee. Therefore, there is one song that captures not only the idea of coming together, being vulnerable, and growing as a committee, but also the notion of keeping things fun, empowering, and encouraging. Therefore, if the IDEEA committee had a song, it would be “I know a place” by MUNA. You can trust that I will think of my fellow committee members every time I blast this song at full volume during a summer sunset.

  1. What's one thing people might be surprised to learn about you?

Every year, I try to take a trip to a new place. However, each trip has a plot twist: I plan my trips around discovering “hidden” queer historical landmarks. I try my best to find tours that tell those “hidden” stories, and it is always a fun way to meet people with similar interests and get to learn things beyond the traditional history of the places I visit! 

  1. If you could have your drink of choice with any leader—past or present—who would it be and what would you ask them?

I would sit down for a chai tea (no coffee here) with Tim Cook! It sometimes feels like a secret for society that financial aid is constantly changing! So, who would be better to chat about navigating change than the exiting CEO of Apple?! Last year, I had the pleasure of working at Apple on weekends, partly because it was a bucket list item, but also because I wanted to learn how tech employees navigate ever-changing environments. Tim Cook started his tenure as the CEO of Apple after the famous Steve Jobs. So I would love to hear from Cook about how to manage high expectations, how to lead high productive teams, how to keep employees motivated through change, and what lessons from the private sector can we take about navigating turbulent times. And while at it, I might ask him to show me his Apple Watch stats – I am curious whether he manages to close his fitness rings every day!

  1. What does "belonging" look like in a financial aid office?

Belonging is a practice. We practice belonging when we hear our colleague next door provide excellent customer service to a student, and we give them a shoutout in our office-wide meeting. We practice belonging when a student says “I’m sorry for taking too much of your time with my questions”, and we reply: “Oh, don’t worry at all, I am here for you”. We practice belonging when we connect with students and families and say, “This was also a concern for me when I was a student, so your situation truly speaks to me”. Sometimes, belonging is practiced in as little as saying “hello, welcome to the financial aid office!” when we open our doors to students in the morning as we start our day, or when we say “Hi!” to them in the cafeteria.

  1. What's one small thing every WASFAA member can do this year to help create a more welcoming community?

This is my favorite question. As we know, Financial Aid is a tight community, so if a colleague at your school gets a promotion, give them a shoutout on the Slack channel! If your school has a NASFAA membership, invite all your coworkers to join the WASFAA Slack! If you see someone new at a conference, or if it’s your coworker’s first time at a Financial Aid conference, introduce them to your WASFAA friends! Also, if you don’t know anyone at a conference, let’s normalize saying hi with a smile and striking up some conversation! I can speak from experience: the friendships you make in this profession will understand you and what the challenges you face at work in a special way. These interactions may seem small, but together they shape whether people feel recognized and supported.

  1. Can you share a moment when you truly felt like you belonged? What made that experience meaningful?

When I first moved to Los Angeles for college, I recall arriving at the dorms with my family. We had a cart full of my clothes and other dorm essentials, I was carrying a backpack, and every one of my family members was carrying something. Moving into the UCLA dorms was a titanic task: 10,000 students moved in over the same weekend, so navigating traffic and finding the right building was difficult, especially since it was our first time setting foot on the UCLA living area. Needless to say, we were nervous and a bit disoriented. However, as we stumbled and finally found Holly – my dorm building for the year, I recall stepping into the building, pressing floor 11 in the elevator, and as soon as the doors opened, the first person I saw was my friend Alex: another kid from the Central Valley whom I had met the month before. He smiled wide open and said, “Hi, Antonio, Welcome! Nice to see you!” And I can tell you – all that tightness in my chest eased a bit. As I walked down the hall, he introduced me to a lot of our floor mates, and it just made me feel like my move-in experience was also a “welcome” to my new home.

  1. Finish this sentence: "When people leave a WASFAA event, I hope they..."

Feel recharged, energized, and motivated. In my experience, every time I have attended a WASFAA event, I come back to my institution with lots of ideas, motivation, and more contacts in my phone! Attending WASFAA events truly feels like taking the creative approach to problem-solving, and hearing about how other schools process aid always gives me ideas on things to try to better serve our students.

  1. What are you most excited to accomplish as the new IDEEA Chair this year?

I would like to work on the area of inclusion within the WASFAA community, ensuring that our members can identify WASFAA as a network of colleagues that can bring training, knowledge, guidance, and much-needed humor whenever we need them. Also, the committee is currently working on developing a library of resources, so I would like to work more on that front as well as on the resources that we can provide at the institutional level to help them transform institutional processes.

  1. In one word, what do you hope people experience because of the IDEEA Committee this year?

Welcomeness. I hope that when they read an IDEEA newsletter article, our members can relate to the experiences and content.  When they see us at WASFAA events, they can come up to any of us and say hi with minimal anxiety. When they need support navigating challenges related to inclusion, they feel welcome reaching out to our IDEEA community.