Tina Rios is an Indigenous woman and mother of Apache Ancestry. She is a long-time resident of the foothills of Los Angeles, between Altadena and Montrose, California. She is a respected leader in her community and volunteers her time with amazing non-profits and community organizations.

She is a champion for child safety and a determined member of the Reimagine Child Safety Coalition and co-founder of the Reimagining Child Safety Group. It is because of her relentless advocacy work that LA County’s Department of Public Health and the Domestic Violence Council awarded her their highest honor, the 2021 Betty Fisher award and in 2023 Break their Silence Activist of the year award.

In the summer of 2024, she joined as tri-chair to the very first Lived Experience Ad-Hoc Committee within this DV Council.

Tina is a trailblazer and lives in her purpose, which is to liberate children from the family policing systems so that they experience love freely from their families, communities, and cultures. She is highly active in local, state, and national Advisory Groups in her role as an LA County Lived Expert and Community Consultant.

She was a member of the CA Mandated Reporting to Community Supporting Task force, where she served as co-chair on the Narrowing the Legal Definition of General Neglect subcommittee who boldly and successfully uplifted the need to remove general neglect as a requirement to report. She continues to participate in the Mandated Supporting Initiative Leadership Team with LA County, California.

Through her commitment to centering and uplifting the voice of those impacted most by racism, she was appointed to a Lived Experience Expert (LEX) group that provided input to the task force’s recommendations for alignment with the North Star of keeping children and families together, safely, well, and with resources to thrive in their already strong communities. The CA Child Welfare Council approved all the recommendations unanimously on September 4, 2024. She was appointed to the lived expert and tribal representative spot on the Mandated Reporting Advisory Council. She is also in the leadership team of the LA County’s Mandated Supporting initiative.

In 2024, City of Pasadena swore Tina into her Vice Chair role with the Sister Cities Committee where serves and travels internationally in a delegation to promote friendship and sharing of culture throughout the world.

Tina has an affinity for re-wilding our rivers and protecting natural areas and freeing waterways from disrupting fish from traveling freely along them in our mountains and cities. She volunteers as a Director of Community Engagement with the Hahamongva Nursery and Arroyo Seco Foundation located on Tongva land.

She started A Child’s Dream Altadena. She is a keynote speaker and readily encourages, counsels, and connects women like herself to resources and knowledge that she learned on the way to a harmonious life free of harm and fear.

Tina is fond of local raw honey and goat milk, so you will often find her strolling nearby farmer’s markets. She is spiritual and loves to share her passion as a Native American living in Los Angeles reconnecting to her culture after two generations of attempted cultural genocide. Tina believes in miracles, which leads to her passion in all her endeavors.