Lissete Frausto is the 2024 winner of SFF’s Phyllis K. Friedman – Retha Smith Robinson Community Leadership Award. The award is named after the daughter of Daniel E. Koshland Sr. (SFF’s co-founder), and Retha Robinson, longtime SFF staff member and director of SFF’s Koshland Program. In 2025, this award recognized an emerging woman-of-color leader under 40 in Alameda County. Future awards will be given to women working in other Bay Area counties.
On a typical Wednesday afternoon, Lissete Frausto arrived at her son’s daycare in San Leandro to pick up her six-month-old baby, Juan Carlos. She entered the facility and spotted something unusual: her son lying on the floor, listless. The daycare owner told her that he had vomited multiple times and refused to drink his bottle.
Lissete knew something was very wrong. She took her baby to the hospital, where doctors determined that Juan Carlos had been shaken to the point where bleeding had formed in his head, behind his eye. Miraculously, he recovered with no lingering side effects.
Grateful for Juan Carlos’ recovery but in desperate need of alternative childcare, Lissete learned of Kidango, which offers low- to no-cost infant, toddler, and preschool programs to 5,000 children in its 56 centers throughout the Bay Area. She enrolled Juan Carlos, who began to thrive in the safe and nurturing environment. “I felt like Kidango was a space where I could trust someone else with my kids again,” she says.
In addition to its childcare and learning programs, Kidango also trains parents to be family advocates. Soon after she started going to Kidango’s parent meetings, Lissete partnered with the state’s social services and child care licensing departments to force the daycare where her son was injured to close.
Nine years later, Lissete herself is now a parent organizer at Kidango, where she trains parents to become advocates who push for policies that improve the lives of families in the Bay Area. Her training helps parents understand the legislative process and the bills that will affect their families. Every spring, she takes parents to lobby policymakers in the state Capitol. This year, the group will be discussing with lawmakers AB 753, a bill co-sponsored by Kidango that increases access to childcare and early learning programs.
Photo: Lissete Frausto (far right) with parent and teacher advocates at the Sacramento Capitol in 2024. Photo courtesy of Lissete Frausto.
At a recent Kidango training session in San Jose’s Mayfair neighborhood – the heart of the city’s historic Mexican-American district – a dozen moms attended Lissete’s presentation. Over zoom and in-person, she provided an overview of the structure of the California legislature, the ins and outs of AB 753, and how to share a compelling story with policymakers. Lissete even assigns the parents homework. “I want to make sure that families have a voice,” she says.
Now a mom to three children, Lissete is also a fierce yet humble member of her community. In addition to her role at Kidango, she also serves on multiple committees on the state, county, and school district levels, including California’s Early Childhood Policy Council’s Parent Committee, Alameda County Early Care & Education Planning Council Steering Committee, and her school district’s English Learner Advisory Committee.
“Lissete’s trainings have provided me with confidence that my voice needs to be heard,” says Mirriam Osae-Addo, a parent of three children enrolled in Kidango programs and a member of the Kidango board. “She supports parents to be the best advocates that we can be for our children. Her work, in and out of the Kidango community, is so very appreciated.”
Lissete says that this SFF award recognition helps to further empower other parent advocates. “After the storm that happened to me,” she says, “this is the rainbow.”
