Yuma Union High leader selected for statewide Flinn-Brown fellowship

Yuma Union High School District Associate Superintendent Lilian Campa was selected as one of 24 Arizonans for the 2026 Flinn-Brown Fellowship, giving a Yuma education leader a seat in a statewide policy network that reaches far beyond district boundaries.

The Arizona Center for Civic Leadership at the Flinn Foundation said the 2026 class is the 18th Flinn-Brown cohort. The program has operated since 2011 and now connects 518 Fellows across Arizona, with more than 90% of them living in the state.

Campa is listed by the foundation as Lilian Campa-Serna, Associate Superintendent for Yuma Union High School District #70, representing Yuma County in Legislative District 25 and Congressional District 9. Her listed areas of expertise are budget, human resources and pre-K-12 education, a combination that puts her squarely at the center of the questions Yuma schools face every year: staffing, funding, governance and the pressures that come with serving a fast-moving border region.

The fellowship is designed to bring civic leaders together around policy discussion on education, water, economic development, healthcare, infrastructure and state government. For Yuma County, those are not abstract topics. They touch school staffing pipelines, career readiness, student transportation, district finance and the way local campuses respond to the needs of families connected to agriculture, cross-border commerce and binational life.

Campa said the honor carries both recognition and responsibility, reflecting a belief that work in education and leadership can matter beyond one office or one school district. She also said she wanted to join the fellowship because meaningful change comes when people understand systems, build relationships and talk thoughtfully with people who see issues differently.

That framing matters in Yuma, where school leaders often have to navigate state policy debates that shape local classrooms long after a decision is made in Phoenix. A broader policy network could give Campa more leverage on workforce readiness, school governance and the needs of students whose lives cross county, state and international lines.

The 2026 fellowship class includes leaders from eight counties and spans rural health care, municipal finance, affordable housing, agriculture, education and law, underscoring that the program is built to bridge sectors as well as geography. In Yuma County, that kind of cross-sector access could help a district leader like Campa connect school priorities to the larger civic agenda.

Yuma County already has a visible place in the Flinn-Brown network, with past fellows working in public health, human resources, nonprofit leadership, agriculture, civic engagement, economic development and small business. Campa’s selection adds another local voice to that pipeline, one that could shape how Yuma’s schools are heard in statewide education and civic policy debates.