“Come to the hill and take that step!” That’s what Gudelia Contreras tells women at the local fish processing plants where she once worked. She says there’s a separation between cannery workers and others in Astoria as if they live in two different worlds. What drives Contreras—a Clatsop Community College Foundation board member for three years—is trying to combine those worlds by making educational opportunities more accessible.

Contreras was born in Providencia, Mexico, a small town in the sugarcane-growing region of the state of Veracruz. She emigrated to the U.S. in 1990 with her then-husband, one child, and another on the way. She says her ex-husband did not believe in education, so she got a job in fast-food restaurant to make enough money to take English classes. She moved from California to Astoria and got her GED at the college in 2012. Meanwhile she worked at one of the canneries for seven years. Since she had advanced to manage the restaurant in California, she was offered a position in quality control at the fish processing plant. But the hours were still grueling. During the height of the fishing season, she would work seven days a week and between 12 and 18 hours a day. She would get off at 3 AM, sleep for two and a half hours, and then take the bus up to the college for classes. She got a job as an Oregon Health Plan outreach worker in 2015 at the Lower Columbia Hispanic Council. In 2016 she earned her associate’s degree.