Beca Josefa Gómez Orozco Scholarship

Josefa Gómez Orozco was a woman that lived ahead of her time. Born in Spain in 1909, by serendipity. Josefa´s parents resided in New York city at the time, and boarded the fateful ocean liner Lusitania so their daughter could be raised in Almeria.  Her dad was an entrepreneur dedicated to the grape import from Spain and to the betterment of US-Spain commerce.

Josefa was raised within the Catholic faith and exemplified early on the virtues of a life of servitude, love, and constant self-improvement. In a time, worldwide, where it was not trendy for women to go to college and work, she graduated in 1929 from Almeria University with a dual bachelor’s degree in education and business. Always humble and thoughtful of the needs of others, you would never know that she was the first woman in the city of Almeria to ever obtain a driver’s license.  She worked as a teacher through her retirement, including the Spanish civil war era, raising her 4 children always accompanied by her husband and best friend – José Salazar Cordero, also a teacher.

Josefa dedicated her life to teaching, guided by the Christian values to serve God, her family and her community with love, passion, service, equity and respect for others and self. This scholarship is intended for young women and men that aim to continuously and consistently improve themselves, and the communities they represent, as she would have wanted.