MEET FELITA
Altadena Is Home
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The community that Felita Kealing serves today is the same community that raised her.
Felita’s family moved to Pasadena when she was just six weeks old, and she has proudly called Northwest Pasadena and Altadena home ever since. She attended Pasadena Head Start before growing up in Pasadena Unified schools, attending Madison Elementary, Hamilton, Wilson, and Blair High School. The school district that shaped her childhood would later become the same district where she watched her own sons learn, grow, and discover who they would become.
When the Eaton Fire devastated Altadena in January 2025, Felita's family lost the home they had built together over twenty-five years. Like so many District 1 families, she experienced the heartbreak of losing not just a house, but a place filled with birthdays, family dinners, holiday traditions, and countless memories.
What carries her through is her community.
Neighbors, friends, educators, churches, and families surrounded one another with compassion, reminding Felita of something she has always believed: the strongest communities are built by people who show up for one another.
For Felita, Altadena has never simply been where she lives.
It's the people she waves to while walking through the neighborhood. It's the parents she's stood beside for decades. It's the students she's watched grow into adults. It's home.
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Raised By Public Education
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Felita often says public education gave her more than an education—it gave her a community.
As a proud graduate of Blair High School, she continued her education at Pasadena City College before earning her bachelor's degree in Communications from California State University, Los Angeles. But some of her greatest lessons happened long before college.
They happened in Pasadena Unified classrooms.
They came from teachers who believed in their students, schools that became gathering places for families, and a district that helped shape not only her education, but her understanding of service, belonging, and responsibility.
Those lessons continued at home. Felita's mother, Gladys Lewis, was an educator and nonprofit leader whose life's work centered on serving children, families, and seniors throughout Pasadena. She taught by example, believing that when a community invests in you, you carry that investment forward by serving others.
Felita has spent her life living that lesson.
Years later, when her own sons entered Pasadena Unified, returning to those same schools felt less like coming back—and more like coming home.
Public education has been the constant thread running through every chapter of Felita's life: first as a student, as a volunteer, then as a parent, as an employee, and always as someone committed to helping every child experience the same sense of belonging she once did.
A Builder Of Community
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If you ask Felita what kind of leader she is, she'll give you a simple answer:
A collaborator.
She believes real leadership is about bringing people together, listening with intention, respecting different perspectives, and helping a community move forward together.
Some people build organizations. Some people build programs.
Felita builds community.
She has a remarkable gift for making people feel welcome, whether they've lived in our community their entire lives or have just arrived.
One morning after dropping her boys off at preschool, Felita hosted a “parking lot tailgate” by opening her SUV hatch and providing coffee and donuts to parents who were dropping off their kids and heading to work. Parents who often exchanged quick waves began talking, sharing stories, supporting one another, and building friendships that strengthened the entire school community.
It wasn't a committee or a formal program. It was simply Felita creating a place where people felt they belonged.
Whether leading the Pasadena Educational Foundation, helping establish the Pasadena Unified African American Parent Council, organizing food and school supply drives, launching literacy initiatives, creating family engagement programs, or building partnerships across Pasadena and Altadena, her work has always begun the same way: by bringing people together.
She has never measured success by titles.
She measures it by relationships, by trust, and by the communities she's helped build.
Serving Our Students Every Day
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Felita doesn't advocate for public education from the sidelines. She walked onto a school campus every morning.
As the Assistant Coordinator of Marketing, Student Recruitment, and Community Relations at Thurgood Marshall Secondary School, she worked alongside students, families, teachers, classified staff, and administrators every single day.
She welcomed prospective families, guided parents through difficult moments, built partnerships with local organizations, recruited new students, celebrated student achievements, coordinated community events, managed school communications, and helped tell the story of one of Pasadena Unified's outstanding schools.
That daily experience gave Felita something no meeting or report ever could—a firsthand understanding of what today's students, educators, and families have experienced.
She has seen the challenges and the successes. And she has seen the extraordinary dedication of the people working every day to help children thrive.
It has only strengthened what she's believed all along:
When schools and families work together, students succeed.
Ready To Serve District 1
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Everything in Felita's life has prepared her for this moment.
She has been the student sitting in Pasadena Unified classrooms.
The mother cheering from the sidelines.
The volunteer reading books to children.
The advocate helping students and parents find their voice.
The community leader bringing neighbors together.
The school employee serving students every single day.
And today, she is one of many Altadena residents rebuilding alongside the community she loves.
Felita is running for the Pasadena Unified Board of Education because she believes our schools should be true community schools—places where families know one another, educators are valued, students are inspired, and every child feels they belong.
District 1—the Pasadena and Altadena community— isn't simply where Felita serves.
It's where she grew up. It's where she raised her family. It's where she learned that communities become stronger when people choose kindness over division, collaboration over conflict, and service over self.
Now, she's ready to continue that work as your Pasadena Unified School Board member.​