Linda Lagunzad

Linda Lagunzad is the Founder and Executive Officer of the Angel Gabriel Education Foundation, a non-profit organization that provides grant writing services to school districts in the Greater Cleveland area. As the Executive Director, she utilizes her considerable knowledge about effective program organization, management, coordination and grant writing to create competitive and sustainable grant applications addressing the educational needs of K-12 schools. To date, she has secured $2 million+ in funding from Ohio organizations for educational programs. Her grant award highlights include the Ohio Department of Education (Straight A Fund, 21st Century Community Learning Centers, Ohio Community Connectors). As the Executive Director of the Angel Gabriel Education Foundation, Linda Lagunzad conducts grant writing consultative services to secure competitive funding from corporate donors, foundations, and government organizations for schools. In doing so she writes grant applications that are strategically aligned to both funding opportunities and her clients' programmatic needs.  Occasionally she will initiate and coordinate work groups composed of internal and external stakeholders to develop program objectives, work plans, budgets, and partnerships—although she can also provide turn-key grant writing services for clients. Overall, Linda Lagunzad facilitates the grant application process through capability evaluation, idea development, prospect research, needs assessment, data gathering, budget analysis, and proposal writing.  Linda Lagunzad has developed a database of 1,000+ funders of Ohio educational programs (K-12) that she uses to match proposal ideas to funders. Through use of the database, and under a marketing partnership with the Cuyahoga County Educational Service Center, she provides monthly updates to school districts regarding available educational grant funding opportunities. +++++++++++ Before working exclusively with the Angel Gabriel Education Foundation, Linda Lagunzad was a litigation attorney with the law firm of Brent Coon & Associates.  She managed complex litigation cases addressing environmental issues, medical and wrongful deaths, hazardous exposure and economic damage claims.  She also prepared litigation and discovery strategies, depositions, and FOIA requests—and practiced before state and federal jurisdictions. From 2013-2014 Linda managed the Cleveland office where she coordinated the work of professional staff.   During her tenure with Brent Coon & Associates, Linda Lagunzad attended case management conferences, mediation sessions, and negotiate settlements, as well as present oral arguments before various courts of appeal. Her experience includes successfully arguing a request for a court-appointed Special Master. During her tenure with Brent Coon & Associates Linda Laguznad served as the appellate led writer for the firm involving the BP Oil Spill "Deepwater Horizon" case before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.  She also prepared, managed and prepped the case in Carolyn Baker, et al., v. Chevron USA, Inc., et al. in the Southern District of Ohio and Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Linda wrote the appellate brief for A & L Industrial Services, Inc. v. Shedrick Oatis, et al. Case argued before the Court of Appeals, First District of Texas. Linda successfully presented oral argument before the Court of Appeals, Eighth District in Whipkey v. Aqua-Chem, Inc., 2012-Ohio-918 involving a landmark asbestos case. +++++++++++   Prior to joining the Brent Coon & Associates law firm, Linda Lagunzad managed the grant application process for both administrative programs and schools within the Cleveland Municipal School District (now called the Cleveland Metropolitan School District). As a grants supervisor her responsibilities included implementing a strategic approach to grant procurement by identifying, soliciting, and securing funding from public and private sectors aligned to the school district's strategic plan. Specifically, Linda developed extensive experience with the grant writing and coordination process which included the development of needs assessments that addressed various programs through research, data gathering, data gap analysis, and budget gap analysis.  Linda also developed considerable knowledge of the grant process that involved understanding of grant application procedures, guidelines and requirements. While at the Cleveland Municipal School District Linda Lagunzad conducted prospect research to identify potential grant sources from federal, state, foundation, corporate sources and foundations nonprofit—which included the monitoring of funding websites for requests for proposals and notices of funding opportunities.  To determine potential funding matches, Linda would write letters of intent to non-profit and corporate funders.  In order to serve the program development needs of schools, Linda Lagunzad specialized in the preparation, management, and submissions (hard-copy and online) of grant proposals to various funders. These proposals required Linda to work collaboratively with various administrators, principals and teaching staff to develop clear and compelling proposals and report narratives addressing funding programs. In additional to competitive grant applications, Linda Lagunzad also coordinated the renewal of grant applications.  This included the management and online submission of a $6 million grant package from the Ohio Department of Education involving 30 proposals addressing various educational programs within the school district. During her tenure at the Cleveland Municipal School District Linda secured more than $23 million in competitive funding from foundations and governmental programs.

-President and Board Chair of SantaCruzan, Inc., a tax-exempt non-profit organization. -Enjoy coordinating fund-raising activities, securing corporate donations, building a volunteer base, and growing an organization. -Trained in strategic planning and enjoy securing competitive grant funds to support implementation of organizational goals. -Interested in intellectual property law and the protection of intellectual property rights. -Interested in environmental law and the protection and preservation of our natural resources for the next generation. -Experience with non-profit start-ups and obtaining related tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status.