Meet Our Team

Somos Uno Leadership

Somos Uno Co-Founder and Author
Dr. Rebecca Palacios is a National Teacher Hall of Fame inductee, National Board Certified Teacher, and leading expert in early childhood education. With over four decades of experience, she is a pioneer in the field of dual language learning and specializes in curriculum planning and instructional design.
In addition to co-founding and formerly serving as vice-chairperson of The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards—an organization that has certified more than 110,000 teachers. She also serves as a Curriculum Board Member for Age of Learning, the leading education technology company that created ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy, and owns her own consulting business, Palacios Educational Consulting. She is the author of a family engagement book to be released in 2022: A Child's First Teacher.
She has presented at the local, state, national and international levels. Dr. Palacios also has dual language book series in progress and hopes to release the first book in May, 2022. She was the first Latina to be inducted into the National Teacher Hall of Fame in 2014.

Somos Uno Co-Founder and Producer
Sumya is recognized as an efficient business development strategist, innovator, manager and team player who drives strategic partnerships and transactions to accelerate growth.
A visionary brand builder and inventive business strategist, Sumya has worked with corporations, non-profits and individuals building programs, products and partnerships that are sustainable and impactful. Through market and trend analysis, competitive dynamics, value proposition strategies, corporate storytelling and tailored launch initiatives, she leads businesses to realize goals.
A focused listener, Sumya pinpoints a company’s key problems and hurdles, identifies areas of collaboration, drives innovation and unlocks shared value. She uses a unique lens to create practical, measurable solutions to incubate new ideas while building and maintaining broad based relationships with senior management, internal business units and industrial professional networks. She works to develop initiatives and programs that result in a compelling portfolio of growth opportunities.

Designer, Arts in Health Consultant, Researcher, & Play for Wellbeing Coach
Katrina is a professional freelance designer, arts in health consultant, researcher, and play for wellbeing coach. She has been a professional designer since 2007. Over a decade of that time was dedicated to creating young children’s educational products. For years, she focused on designing, researching, and managing the experience of ABCmouse, ABCmouse English, My Reading Academy, ReadingIQ, and other EdTech products.
Katrina has her Master of Arts degree in Arts in Medicine from University of Florida (2018) and Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Multimedia Electronic Art from California State University, Chico (2010). She has also been part of a variety of arts in research, advocacy, evaluation, and volunteer efforts for over a decade…ranging from leading opportunities for coworkers and facilitating arts workshops with local nonprofits to conducting evaluations, assisting with research, blog authoring, and hosting networking events. Katrina is an advocate of creativity, connection, and fun to enhance wellbeing and prevent burnout, inspiring her to launch a company dedicated to helping hardworking adults play more to burnout less (Playtronus LLC). Here, she also provides arts in health consulting services and a variety of wellbeing resources. Learn more about Katrina and her work at www.katrinapineda.com.

Dr. Norland Tellez is an award-winning writer and animation director with a PhD in the study of mythology. He teaches life Drawing, Animation, and Character Design at Otis College of Art and Design, Cal State Fullerton, and USC school of Cinematic Arts

Vickie Pellouchoud works as an illustrator creating art for video games, movies, books and toys. She is also a fine artist creating figurative, landscape and still life paintings. She lives with her family in Los Angeles, California and is passionate about oil painting, gardening and cooking. She has 4 chickens Pepper, Lacey, Virginia and Juliet that break into her garden to eat swiss chard and a black cat named Cocoa that loves to go for adventures.

Daniel Griffo was born on March 8, 1973, in La Plata, Argentina. In his teens, he became a self-taught comic book illustrator, working for Argentine and Italian publishers. Shortly afterwards, he worked for various studios creating licensed art, where he sharpened his skills and amassed a great deal of experience. As a freelance illustrator, Daniel has worked for many large companies, including Image Comics, Warner, DC, Amazon Children's Publishing, Marshall Cavendish Corp/CCB, and HarperCollins, among others.

Managing Editor
Sarah Jane Abbott is a publishing professional with over a decade of experience as a children's book editor, both at Simon & Schuster and on a freelance basis. She is also a ghostwriter for a wide variety of projects and works as a supervising bookseller at Books are Magic. She lives in Brooklyn with her cat, Loki.

High School Student, STEM Scholar, and Youth Volunteer
Currently enrolled in a STEM program of study for computer science, I am a high school student with a strong interest in technology and education. As a dedicated member of the school marching band, I perform on both the clarinet and bass clarinet. I am bilingual in Spanish and English and have experience aligning TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) with bilingual children's books to support early literacy development. I actively volunteer at my local elementary school and church, assisting with student support, community events, and bilingual literacy efforts.