Cynthia Rivera-Garcia received a notice for St. Joan Antida High School’s alumni brunch Sunday, Sept. 29, and she was interested in attending.
However, life happened, and she ended up forgetting to register.
The Monday before the event, Rivera-Garcia, a 2015 graduate of SJA, received a call informing her that she had been named the school’s Alumna of the Year, and they hoped she would be at the event to receive it.
She was.
“It caught me off guard,” Rivera-Garcia said. “I was surprised.”
It’s quite the honor for someone who has been out of high school less than a decade.
“For me, it means a lot,” said Rivera-Garcia, who is the Director of Safe Environment for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. “I have seen the importance of networking in the community, and being involved and staying involved, which through my job, obviously, has me still connected to high schools.”
A member of St. John Paul II Parish in Milwaukee, Rivera-Garcia grew up attending St. Adalbert in Milwaukee.
“My family has always been Catholic, but they were not practicing Catholic until I was in fourth grade,” she said. “That’s when I decided I wanted to do my first Communion and my parents started going more to church, and ever since then, I have been very into church.”
By the age of 13, Rivera-Garcia was involved in parish ministry, and has since been involved with the women’s group, young adult and youth programs.
When getting ready to enter high school, she applied to a few educational institutions but chose St. Joan Antida because of the culture and community environment, along with a perk: a potential pilgrimage to Italy.
“I really wanted to not only be at a good school, but also in a school where I felt identified,” Rivera-Garcia said. “I believe right now 60 percent of their students are Latinas. I felt at home in a sense.”
In her time at SJA, she was an engaged student and actively involved, coordinating and helping out at various events, and serving as an advocate for her classmates. She also got to take that trip to Italy during the winter break of her senior year in high school.
The first time she had heard about the Safe Environment Office was when she was a senior at Mount Mary University and she started a part-time job at Casa Romero, a Jesuit retreat center on Bruce Avenue on the south side of Milwaukee. She had to have safe environment certification to work there.
Along with its other responsibilities, the Safe Environment Office oversees safety awareness training, background checks and other requirements for all staff and volunteers who work around children in archdiocese parishes, schools and other entities.
After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in business administration in the spring of 2019, Rivera-Garcia was helping with registration for a Hispanic community event at Mary Mother of the Church Pastoral Center when a couple of archdiocesan staff members approached her. They said they liked the way she interacted with people and suggested she apply for an open position in the Safe Environment Office. The fact she was bilingual was another factor in her favor.
However, she had doubts, because she believed working at the archdiocese was such a high-level job that she wasn’t ready.
“I doubted my skills and I doubted my own personality,” Rivera-Garcia said.
However, she was hired and began in November 2019, working under the tutelage of former Safe Environment Program Manager Suzanne Nickolai. When Nickolai left in July 2023, Rivera-Garcia was promoted to program manager and she was recently named director.
“I had an amazing predecessor who taught me everything I know,” Rivera-Garcia said. “I learned a lot from her. I think we both worked really well together, where I had the opportunity to learn what she was doing. When she let me know she was leaving, she made the comment that if they hired a new person, I was going to have to train them myself because I knew the role, I knew the office, I knew the process.”
She said she likes to joke that she is “Child Protective Services for the Catholic Church.”
“I make sure that children are protected, that we are following guidelines and being in compliance with the USCCB, and keeping our parishes and schools safe.”
Rivera-Garcia has really worked at making sure her office has a partnership relationship with parishes, helping them to be in compliance with guidelines and assisting them in getting to that point.
“Something I live by is that I work for the parishes,” she said. “(This position) wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the parishes. In the past five years, I think we’ve really tried to build that bridge, not only with the English-speaking community but with the Latino community, and making sure they know what we’re here for. We’re here to work with them and build a community to make a difference. Our relationship with parishes and schools has grown.”
Cynthia Rivera-Garcia, shown with President Rene Howard-Paez, was named the St. Joan Antida High School Alumna of the Year at the school’s annual alumni brunch Sunday, Sept. 29. (Submitted photo)
