Faculty & Staff

Amber Ajluni

Hello team! I'm LATTC's newest English faculty member and am so happy to be here. I moved to Southern California from San Jose to get my B.A. and eventually my M.A. in English from California State University, Long Beach, and I've been here ever since. After finishing my M.A., I taught English at several community colleges and universities in the area before finding a full-time position here at LATTC. As a teacher, I believe in giving students the power to shape their own educational experiences in my classroom and love using relevant themes and collaborative assignments to create a fun and energetic classroom dynamic.

Outside of teaching, my interests include performing with my salsa team, cooking, and snuggling up with my two cats, Marlowe and Wednesday.

George Blake

A Maryland native, George Blake is first a learner, then a teacher. He has a varied academic history, having attended public, private, and art schools. Completing his undergraduate and graduate studies from Morgan State University—an HBCU—exceptionally equipped him to be an innovative and dedicated English professor. Fortuitously, George embraced his career, beginning in adult literacy, and later at Morgan State, as a full time lecturer. George is also a successful writer, having written all forms and most genres from marketing materials, to self- help books, to television episodes. George happily takes that experience into the classroom. Since moving to Los Angeles in 2001, he has been part of the adjunct faculty at LATTC, and proudly joined LATTC as a full-time faculty member in 2017.

Cindy Cruz

Hi! I’m originally from Los Angeles and attended LAUSD schools, like many of our students. I began my educational journey at Santa Monica College, and then transferred to CSULB. At CSULB, I earned an undergraduate degree in English Education with an emphasis in Literature (I originally planned on becoming a high school teacher), and also completed an M.A degree in English. In my free time, I enjoy Netflix, reading, traveling, eating out, and spending time with my senior beagle.

Teresa Dolan

Roberto Mancia

I am the proud son of Salvadoran parents who immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s due to the civil unrest in the country. As a newly arrived immigrant, I immediately felt out of place, but even at a young age I realized the endless opportunities available to me in the form of education. Learning English was challenging, but I slowly discovered the innate power of language that would allow me to reinvent myself during my educational journey. In my first years as a community college student at Trade-Tech, I often felt inadequate, voiceless, and even invisible at times, but in the works of Maya Angelou, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Toni Morrison, Pablo Neruda, Leo Tolstoy, Ralph Ellison and many other authors, I found the courage to exist; I found my voice; I found my vocation. In 1999 I graduated with a master’s degree in English from Long Beach State, and the following year I was privileged to join the English faculty, first as an adjunct and then as a full-time instructor.

Armando Mendez

I am a reader. Over time I’ve come to realize that is the single most important influence in my life--after my parents, of course--of who I am.

I was raised in northeast Los Angeles, a neighborhood triangle roughly framed by Dodger Stadium, the Rose Bowl, and Cal State L.A. My love of reading started with comic books.

Rashidah Shakir

Rashidah Shakir-Blackshere began her career at LATTC in 2000. She founded Shakespeare on the Green in 2011, a collaborative performance with literature and CTE students in Construction, Cosmetology and Fashion Design. Her Facebook page "Shakespeare in the Multicultural Classroom" connects global educators to fresh and innovative ways to teach Shakespeare. She speaks French as a second language and Spanish as a close third. A lifelong supporter of public education, Professor Shakir helped to found City Language Immersion Charter in 2013. CLIC is a Spanish immersion elementary school in the Arlington Heights community of Los Angeles. In her spare time, Ms. Shakir travels and plays tennis.

Sally Sowter

Originally from the United Kingdom, Sally Sowter earned her bachelor’s degree in English from University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), and her master’s degree in English from California State University, Long Beach, where she received Distinguished Graduate Honors.

Carmen Viliesid

I am from Long Beach, California, but in my growing-up years I also lived in Kansas, Washington state, and Nipomo, California. I was not always a dedicated student, but I have always loved reading stories and learning about the world around me through books. In many ways while growing up, reading saved me and provided me another world when I was feeling down.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to share stories with my students. I believe that it is through stories—the stories we tell others, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, and the infinite stories out there to read and to view through film—that we can learn empathy and truly make positive change in the world and for ourselves.