“If you want longevity, you’ve got to feed the fire every day, every week, every month. You’ve got to remember why you’re doing the work.”

— Antonio Cisneros

Antonio Cisneros is the SCORES Program Director for West Contra Costa County, overseeing 28 school sites and 35 coaches serving over 1,000 students. A first-generation American who grew up in the Tenderloin, he attended Bessie Carmichael Elementary, then De Marillac Academy, followed by Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep. After earning his BA and MA in counseling at St. Mary's, Antonio worked as a coach with SCORES before leaving in 2020 to build a counseling program from the ground up at De La Salle Academy, a small Catholic school in Concord, CA. In 2023, he returned to SCORES to launch the West Contra Costa program. We talked to him about building sustainable infrastructure while "riding the bike," the mentors who shaped his path, and why brave people feel afraid and jump anyway.

You left SCORES in 2020 to build a counseling program at De La Salle Academy, then returned in 2023. What brought you back?

When we got hit with lockdown in March 2020, both my parents lost their jobs, and so I became the head of the family in a sense. My focus was on financial stability, and SCORES was navigating the school closures of the pandemic. There was just so much uncertainty.

There was a really beautiful opportunity to start a counseling program from the ground up at De La Salle Academy. I was the first and only counselor there, so I built the whole thing from the ground up. About a year later, I got a dual position to be the school counselor and the graduate support director, creating a program that helps new graduates continue their educational journey.

Then, as the Bay Area and SCORES climbed out of the pandemic, I got an opportunity from Hamza, SCORES’ Chief Growth Officer, to launch the West Contra Costa region for SCORES. The timing was right, and I’d spent three good years with De La Salle. Here was a huge opportunity to serve a large underserved population. I honestly think the experience I gained at De La Salle played a huge role in my ability to hit the ground running with SCORES in West Contra Costa County, because it felt like boot camp–in a really good way. When I was building the counseling program at De La Salle, it was lockdown time, and I had to be really strategic, creative, and intentional, because mental health problems were raging. I needed to connect deeply with folks, finetune and practice my deep listening, my whole body listening.

So you came in and got the opportunity to essentially build the West Contra Costa region for SCORES from scratch. It’s a big program.

Jamie Carter, SCORES Program Manager for WCC, uses this quote – I love her metaphor – We’re riding the bike while building it. And then Hamza adds, We're not riding a bike, we're on an airplane, building the plane while trying to land it. The hardest thing in building out this program is creating infrastructure that is long-lasting and sustainable. It's not just like I'm going to do this for now and then I'll deal with things later. Because the more that I do that, the more problems come up.

The word for me, and I learned this from De La Salle, was sustainability. Sustainability is everything. It has to make sense. We can get excited about doing things, and I have to slow us down and put the brakes ask, well, is this sustainable? How is this going to be continuous?

I have to be in alignment with the folks that I'm hiring, both in terms of heart and head. They have to be passionate about the work just as much as I am. And I need folks that can stay on their A-game, with admin pieces, with building things. I need folks who are flexible, because if we don't have those kinds of people, it's really hard to keep someone who wants something that's settled when we're not even close to being there.

You've worked as a teacher, coach, and counselor. How do those experiences show up in your leadership?

I pull from these places. At Redding Elementary, I learned how to be a teacher. With SCORES, I learned how to be a coach. And then with De La Salle, I learned how to be a counselor. Those were three very different but very similar buckets, and that's where I pull from when I'm leading my staff. Sometimes I need to be more of a counselor than a coach, and sometimes I need to be more of a teacher than a counselor.

With De La Salle, it was learning how to deeply listen. Chris Giangregorio was an incredible leader. He was the CEO, but he was also the principal, and he was also filling in for teachers when they were missing. I was always in awe of how strong a leader he was. He would not let anything fold him. He was very solution-oriented, just a strategist. He helped me to realize how important clean work is. It's not just about working hard. It's about presenting it well.

It felt like a trifecta effect after leaving there. I was like, I feel prepared. All of these things that I'm doing now, I can recall from being at Civic Center, or Redding, or De La Salle Academy.

How does mentorship show up in your work now?

I would not be here without Tina Hepton, a site coordinator at Redding. For me, she was the first stepping stone into my next move. Now, mentoring others, I don't look at it like I want to be a mentor; I look at it as I want to make sure that folks feel supported and empowered to do the work.

Through this director role, I don't have the opportunity to work directly with students anymore, but I'm really loving mentoring my staff. I can't impact 10 or 20 students directly now, but now I can impact a thousand indirectly through the people that I work with, by instilling values in them and creating sustainable structures.

Working with SCORES is not just a job. It comes with purpose and values behind the work. I really instill that in my staff. You could come here and you could do the job, anyone can maybe, but what are your whys, what are your values? Why are you doing this work that can be really hard? I want you to think about it, not just as two to six o'clock, you're clocking in, clocking out, but what are you doing in those four hours? And how are you also feeding your fire? Because if you want longevity, you’ve got to feed the fire every day, every week, every month. You've got to remember why you're doing the work.

What sort of wisdom or advice would you give to your younger self?

It's okay to feel afraid. This is the thing I always tell the kids, because this always comes up. It's okay to feel afraid. A brave person feels afraid and does the thing anyway. That's what brave is. Brave doesn't mean not feeling fear. That's just normal. It's a human experience. So to feel brave is not to not feel fear. It's to jump anyway and feel your way through it.

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