MOHAVE COUNTY — Mohave Community College (MCC) is pleased to announce the appointment of Julio Galindo as the new Executive Director of College Advancement. In this role, Galindo will oversee the MCC Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to raising funds to provide college scholarships for local students and supporting College operations. Additionally, he will work with the MCC Bighorns Booster Club, which supports the College’s men’s and women’s soccer teams – the first college athletic teams based in northwestern Arizona.
“Julio’s extensive experience and dedication to student success make him an invaluable addition to our team,” said MCC President Dr. Stacy Klippenstein. “We look forward to his leadership in advancing the College mission and supporting our students and community.”
Galindo will provide leadership and direction on matters related to the College advancement strategy. He will manage the Office of Advancement and oversee all MCC Foundation operations, including strategic planning and the implementation of key strategies to achieve fundraising, friend-raising, alumni engagement and Foundation goals. As an innovative thought leader, he will offer the MCC Foundation Board and Bighorns Booster Club advice and direction on donor cultivation and stewardship, and will help lead the development of events and activities associated with the Advancement arm of the College.
Galindo brings a wealth of experience to MCC. He most recently worked for Mesalands Community College and has a 30-year career, which includes work in non-profit organizations, government entities and business. Among his many achievements, he created and led the Barrio Logan College Institute in San Diego, empowering underrepresented students from the 3rd grade through college completion.
His government experience includes two years as an inner-city public-school kindergarten teacher and positions with a U.S. Congressman and a California State Senator. In the business world, he spent seven years in wealth management, bringing in more than $125 million for his firm, and eight years as a small business owner providing financial services to his clients.
Galindo holds a B.A. in Political Science with a Minor in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an M.P.A. from the City University of New York at Baruch College. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Education at the University of the Pacific, focusing on Leadership & Innovation, with a dissertation on guiding Afro-Latino male community college students in building generational wealth.
Beyond his professional accomplishments, Galindo has been married for over 27 years and has two sons, ages 23 and 26, both of whom are college graduates.
Galindo replaces longtime MCC employee Shawn Bristle, who will become the Dean of Student and Community Engagement at the college’s Neal Campus-Kingman. It is a familiar role for Bristle, who served as Dean of the Bullhead City campus for many years. Galindo and Bristle will assume their new positions on July 1.
MCC appoints Julio A. Galindo as the college’s new Executive Director of College Advancement.
Q & A with Julio
Where were you born?
I was raised in Moline, IL (my dad worked at the John Deere headquarters there for 30 years) but I was born in Mexico City. I flew into Chicago from Mexico City with my mom at 11 months of age and spent my summers traveling from Illinois to Mexico City to visit my grandparents (& uncles/aunts/cousins), from age of 7 to 18, with my last summer spent studying at the Universidad Iberoamericana. I will add that my paternal grandfather walked from Jalisco, Mexico to Salina, Kansas in 1919 when he was 15 years of age (during the last pandemic and during the Mexican Revolution), sent as the oldest son to find work to send money to his starving parents & siblings; he worked for the Union Pacific Railroad for 12 years, until 1931, when the Great Depression hit. And my maternal grandfather was a bracero farm worker in California during WWII, also coming from Mexico, for a number of years. They both came back to Mexico when their much needed labor was exhausted.
Where did you grow up and go to high school?
I grew up in the Quad-Cities, mostly East Moline, and went to high school at Alleman Catholic High School in Rock Island, IL, where I had a profound spiritual experience in a retreat at the end of my senior year. That allowed me to better assimilate my 11 year old brother’s passing just a few months later, and just 2 weeks prior to starting my freshman year in college. He died in a bicycle accident on 8/7/87 as he was wearing no helmet. My brother Fabian wanted to go play soccer one day at the University of Notre Dame (but my two sons, his nephews, did get to play collegiate soccer).
Any hobbies/interests you care to share?
While a junior at the University of Illinois, my Columbian dorm floor mate got me into cycling (ironic). Since joining (and eventually leading) the Illini Bicycle Racing Club soon after, some of my best friends continue to be my ‘band of brothers’ that I used to train and race with in college. I went to see 2 of my college teammates race in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. The ones who turned professional went to San Diego soon after, and in 1994 I joined them from Illinois. I still ride today to try to stay in some semblance of physical shape, and in early August I will be doing a 50 mile mountain bike race with one of my collegiate cycling teammates in Steamboat Springs, CO. My wife and I also enjoy traveling, hiking and reading, as we are empty nesters.
Do you have family in Mohave County or another part of Arizona?
I do not have family in Mohave County, but am looking to make roots there. I have lived on the west coast, the east coast and the Midwest, and my standard reply is that “I am not from here, but I got here as soon as I could.” And since I am not from Mohave County, I also got there as soon as I could. However, I first arrived in Tucson in March of 1992 (when I was a super senior) to train with my Illini cycling teammates who were getting ready for the ’92 Olympic Trails. I then had the ironic privilege of choosing to come work in Tucson (or I could have worked in Las Vegas or Scottsdale) in 2005 when I was hired to work in wealth management. But at that time, I came to Tucson with a wife and two small boys. Tucson was a great place to raise our sons, and now that they have graduated from college, they live in PHX and NYC.
Have you been to region before, and do you have any positive impressions you can share?
I had only driven past Kingman on my way from Tucson to the many Las Vegas soccer tournaments that my two sons participated in over a decade, but Kingman feels like where I grew up in semi-rural Illinois in towns of 20,000 to 40,000 individuals. It feels like home to me.
Why did you choose to come to MCC?
After I sold my financial services business (just before the pandemic, thankfully), instead of retiring and ‘riding my bike all day long,’ I wanted to get back into the business of fomenting (what I call) ‘more fully articulated’ (MFA) young minds. Although I turned down a PhD fellowship at Indiana University in 2005 to instead work in wealth management and financial services for 15 years, as I had a family to raise, I still had that itch to get my doctorate. I just completed over three years of education doctoral courses at the University of the Pacific (Sacramento, CA campus), and am now working on my dissertation. And so having worked at another community college these past 2 years, I see the community college model as the ideal construct for me in combining that ethos of mine (MFA) with what I feel I am good at, which is building relationships in order to bring in much needed financial resources for students, faculty & staff in need. All of that combined with the great leadership that Dr. Stacy Klippenstein provides at Mohave Community College, as leadership is so important in dealing with adaptive challenges, I chose to be part of his team in building out the MCC Foundation over many years.
Do you like the heat?
Although I grew up in Illinois, I definitely do not miss not seeing the sun at all for 5 to 6 months at a time. I am a desert rat, having spent the last two decades in southern AZ. But I hear that Kingman does get some snow, which will be fun to experience again from time to time, especially when riding my road or mountain bike!