Dr. Xigrid Soto-Boykin is an assistant research professor and senior scientist for Bilingual Learning for the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University. Her passion for leveraging the success of bilingual children stems from her personal experiences as a person who learned English at 11 years old, and her professional experiences as a bilingual speech-language pathologist, an Ameri Corps Reading Tutor, and an early childhood researcher. Dr. Soto-Boykin’s work has three strands. The first strand focuses on identifying and dismantling systematic barriers impacting Latine, Black, Indigenous, Asian, and other bilingual children of color’s access to high quality bilingual education through policy, research, and technical assistance. The second strand seeks to interrogate and address the sociopolitical ideologies that impact the linguistic equity of young emergent children of color, Black children who speak Black English, and children with disabilities. The third strand focuses on developing and evaluating culturally sustaining approaches to providing Latine, Black, and other children of color, as well as children with disabilities, with high-quality, inclusive early childhood education. Dr. Soto-Boykin earned her B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. in Communication Sciences and Disorders with a focus on bilingual early literacy instruction from the University of South Florida, and she completed her postdoctoral fellowship at Juniper Gardens’ Children’s Project at the University of Kansas. She is also the founder of Habla DLL, which offers resources on bilingualism and culturally sustaining approaches to parents and educators of young bilingual children.
