Pearl Arredondo is a Los Angeles educator who overcame the odds stacked against her, beginning in middle school. She traveled out of her district 1.5 hours by bus to get to a better school. After college, she went back to the same middle school to teach, to the surprise of other teachers there. She focused on meeting the needs of underserved students and then went on to found the San Fernando Institute for Applied Media (SFiAM), the first pilot school established in the Los Angeles Unified School District at the middle school level.