Photo by Surge Institute
One of our most fundamental desires is that
we just want to be seen.
I want to help people feel seen and to see themselves.
I am an accomplished leader, education advocate, and facilitator dedicated to building new realities for our young people and helping the adults who support them show up as their authentic selves.
A 3rd generation San Franciscan of Filipina, Mexican, Irish, and Cape Verdean ancestry, I served San Francisco Unified School District - where I attended school - for 10 years, providing strategic and equity-centered leadership to a wide range of work across the district. My multicultural background and diverse schooling experiences as a student specifically influenced my work to empower young people and help them develop a sense of self-efficacy before they graduate.
As an Educational Policy Analyst, I designed and implemented programming in alignment with Board of Education Resolutions and policies that focused on students dealing with parental incarceration and students experiencing homelessness. A primary focus of this work consisted of reviewing and developing anti-racist central-office processes to support students and families through year-long advisory boards, pilot programming for district-wide implementation, and reviewing best practices already happening at school sites. Prior to that, I worked in Human Resources as a Senior Human Capital Analyst, strategically staffing school-sites and central-offices with certificated and administrative staff.
In 2022, I joined the Center for Applied Research Solutions (CARS) as a Senior Project Manager for the School Crisis Recovery and Renewal project, where I was able to support a national network of educators and school crisis leaders across the country who were navigating the aftermath of "big things." My personal experience of having suddenly lost my mother, two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic became a global issue, and experiencing many school-related losses and crises in San Francisco public schools as a student and school leader, guided me in coordinating the project's efforts and facilitating from the heart. Now I support other behavioral and mental health initiatives through my work at CARS.
I am skilled at leading within complex systems where, using data and inquiry-based practices, I have been able to engage a wide range of stakeholders in design and improvement projects that remain student and family-centered and with an anti-racist lens. Through holding space for difficult conversations, naming challenging dynamics, and uplifting insights, I have helped folks identify mechanisms for change within the very communities they are a part of. I arrive with authenticity in all of the work that I do, and I strive to support whoever I am working with in being comfortable doing the same. Growing up, I had teachers and adults who looked like me in my life, and as my identity has grown and I have been able to see myself more clearly - as someone mixed, as a woman, as an elder millennial, as a griever - all I hope for is that I can help others develop their abilities to see them selves fully in both their personal and professinoal lives. As a result, I coordinate, project manage, facilitate, write, lead, and grieve from a place of honesty with transparent vulnerability and welcome others to do the same while we are together.
Though I was born a Nicole, my mother immediately knew I was a 'Niki,' which is the name most people call me by. As much as I have loved telling jokes, stories, and performing in my lifetime, I am always seeking to be a part of an ensemble cast as much as I am seeking to be a star in any work I do.
I hold a Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College and a Master of Arts in Education: Equity & Social Justice from San Francisco State University. I was a Surge Institute Fellow in their inaugural Oakland, CA, cohort, and long-term serving member of the board of the San Francisco Coalition of Essential Small Schools (SF-CESS). I have consulted for Surge Institute and SF-CESS, facilitating space within professional learning communities.
As an Educational Policy Analyst, I designed and implemented programming in alignment with Board of Education Resolutions and policies that focused on students dealing with parental incarceration and students experiencing homelessness. A primary focus of this work consisted of reviewing and developing anti-racist central-office processes to support students and families through year-long advisory boards, pilot programming for district-wide implementation, and reviewing best practices already happening at school sites. Prior to that, I worked in Human Resources as a Senior Human Capital Analyst, strategically staffing school-sites and central-offices with certificated and administrative staff.
In 2022, I joined the Center for Applied Research Solutions (CARS) as a Senior Project Manager for the School Crisis Recovery and Renewal project, where I was able to support a national network of educators and school crisis leaders across the country who were navigating the aftermath of "big things." My personal experience of having suddenly lost my mother, two weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic became a global issue, and experiencing many school-related losses and crises in San Francisco public schools as a student and school leader, guided me in coordinating the project's efforts and facilitating from the heart. Now I support other behavioral and mental health initiatives through my work at CARS.
I am skilled at leading within complex systems where, using data and inquiry-based practices, I have been able to engage a wide range of stakeholders in design and improvement projects that remain student and family-centered and with an anti-racist lens. Through holding space for difficult conversations, naming challenging dynamics, and uplifting insights, I have helped folks identify mechanisms for change within the very communities they are a part of. I arrive with authenticity in all of the work that I do, and I strive to support whoever I am working with in being comfortable doing the same. Growing up, I had teachers and adults who looked like me in my life, and as my identity has grown and I have been able to see myself more clearly - as someone mixed, as a woman, as an elder millennial, as a griever - all I hope for is that I can help others develop their abilities to see them selves fully in both their personal and professinoal lives. As a result, I coordinate, project manage, facilitate, write, lead, and grieve from a place of honesty with transparent vulnerability and welcome others to do the same while we are together.
Though I was born a Nicole, my mother immediately knew I was a 'Niki,' which is the name most people call me by. As much as I have loved telling jokes, stories, and performing in my lifetime, I am always seeking to be a part of an ensemble cast as much as I am seeking to be a star in any work I do.
I hold a Bachelor of Arts from Vassar College and a Master of Arts in Education: Equity & Social Justice from San Francisco State University. I was a Surge Institute Fellow in their inaugural Oakland, CA, cohort, and long-term serving member of the board of the San Francisco Coalition of Essential Small Schools (SF-CESS). I have consulted for Surge Institute and SF-CESS, facilitating space within professional learning communities.
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Santísima Yelamu is an offering to the spirit of the city of San Francisco.
Throughout the past 5+ years, the city has been through many changes. We as individuals and as a community have lost so much without the usual ritual and ceremony that such changes necessitate. Rituals like funerals, graduations, birthday parties, weddings, baby showers, were put on hold. Without the space these rituals create to gracefully integrate big life changes, there is a sense of unfinishedness, of incompleteness that permeates our world. We have been stuck in this liminal space for too long, and the unease it creates can be felt in everything we do. Through this offering, we hope to provide a space to grieve, release, honor, and integrate whatever it is that you are holding. We offer this space to put it down, to rest your arms, to share the load. We intentionally chose Incline Gallery, this liminal space, to create a portal to rest and healing. We invite you to offer up something you are honoring, mourning, letting go of, moving through, as you walk the ramps of this in-between space. Let the spirit of Yelamu hold you as you go. We are so thankful to this city for raising us, loving us, holding us. So let your journey here be an offering to her. You entered here as one person, and you will leave as someone new. How will you mark this change? |
About the Sisters Magtoto
Niki has devoted her career to creating safer and more informed spaces for under-resourced members of our community.
Monica has devoted her career to making beautiful spaces and bringing magic to the ordinary.
As fourth-generation San Franciscans of Filipino, Mexican, Cape Verdean, and Irish descent, the Sisters Magtoto have been nurtured, grown, loved, and held by our city. And, there have been so many changes and losses of all kinds for us in the past few years that we have yet to grieve.The fabric of our communities was torn and thrown in so many directions as the larger fabric of the world is snagging and tearing.
In early March of 2020, our mother lost her battle with cancer, and in January of 2022, we lost our remaining matriarch, our grandmother. These true blue San Francisco homegirls were the epitome of love and community. They welcomed in everyone who needed love, everyone who needed and extra mom or grandma.
We never got to honor them in the grand fashion they deserved.
So, in their lineage of inclusivity, open hearts, and explosive, fierce love, we welcome you to Santísima Yelamu.
Check out a walkthrough of the space
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Slide show of the prints, 5 large paintings, and 11 papier-mache sculptures created for the show as our three ofrendas - for community, past selves and spirit.
Here is the ceremony we performed on 11/1/25 as part of our space activation