Concha Delgado Gaitan was born in Chihuahua, Mexico and immigrated with her parents and four sisters to Los Angeles, California at the age of eight years old.

Her early years in the United States taught her to value education, love for family and friends, hard work, social justice, and the importance of close family, school and community connections.

As an elementary school teacher and later an elementary school principal, Concha was a community leader and activist working for social change in poor and underrepresented communities.

Concha earned her Ph.D. at Stanford University; she became an assistant professor of Anthropology and Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara and full professor at the University of California, Davis.

As an educational anthropologist, Concha’s scholarly research asserts a strong commitment to intellectual ideas in relation to praxis in the real world. She has studied issues concerning literacy, critical ethnography, and family, school and community connections in culturally diverse communities including Latinos in the US, Russian refugees, Alaskan Natives, Southeast Asians, and transnational populations in Mexico and Spain.

Concha lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with husband, Dudley Thompson, a commercial graphics businessman and their tabby cat, Sofia.