Education has been one of the strongest forces to shape Dr. Zinab Galal Elhagrasey Muñoz’ destiny. Born to an elementary teacher and a professor in Business Administration, improving the quality of life by means of education has always been her family’s credo. The only one of his siblings to go beyond the local village elementary school, Zinab’s father broke his cycle of poverty by exchanging his simple farm life for an education in Cairo, the big city. Through top national ranking and full-ride scholarships, he earned the opportunity to immigrate to the United States of America to pursue his doctoral business degree at the University of Texas in Dallas, where Zinab was born. In 1992, at the age of six, her family moved to Kuwait, where she was immersed in global education in British and American school systems. She graduated high school from the Universal American School, Kuwait in 2003. Much like her parents departed their loved ones and immigrated to the U.S., Zinab said her goodbyes and moved back to Texas, to begin her journey in higher education. 

 

Zinab earned her bachelor’s degree in International Business in Spanish, her third language, from the University of Texas in Arlington in 2008. During the summer of her graduation, after much soul searching, Zinab pursued alternative teacher certification. She was employed for six years in the Irving Independent School District. Teaching as a bilingual, gifted and talented educator, Zinab taught first, third and fifth grade. She served as committee lead on various campus and district initiatives, advocating for all students and parents and engaging the community in creative ways. She earned her master’s of educational leadership and principal certification in her fifth year teaching, continuing to serve and lead as an assistant principal and a Bilingual/ESL Pre-Kindergarten and Kindergarten summer school principal for two summers. 

 

Approaching Dallas ISD for career growth opportunities, the district’s recruiters connected Zinab with Texas Tech University upon learning of her vision and aspirations. She was selected to serve as one of the foundational Site Coordinators for the TechTeach program in 2014. This role provided a rich opportunity to further her mastery of the instructional core, during which she supervised and evaluated three cohorts of student teachers in Dallas ISD. Her warm, relational, empathic personality coupled with her interpersonal talents excelled her ability to recruit students and build partnerships with the local community colleges and school districts. In 2015, she was promoted to her current role, Institutional Partnership Liaison for the Dallas Fort Worth region. This role was created for her to sustain strategic partnerships with Tarrant and Dallas County Community College Districts and recruit aspiring educators for Dallas, Grand Prairie and Fort Worth ISDs. Zinab serves on the advisory board of three Dallas ISD early college high school P-TECH campuses with teaching pathways. 

 

Zinab earned her doctorate of educational leadership from Texas Tech University in 2017. Her dissertation research studied the institutional partnership model of the Dallas ISD Collegiate Academies, with Dallas ISD Superintendent Dr. Michael Hinojosa serving on her doctoral committee. She developed a blueprint for other school districts searching for the gateway to this unprecedented workforce opportunity. 

 

In her never-ending passion to teach, learn and serve others, Dr. Muñoz has never stopped teaching throughout her career. She has been privileged to serve as an adjunct instructor for the TechTeach program and Dallas County Community College District. She has taught instructional pedagogy, foundations of education and special populations, teacher assistant certification, adult ESL, workplace communication and academic probation courses. She currently teaches as adjunct graduate faculty for Texas Tech’s Master’s and Doctoral Educational Leadership programs. Her courses focus on strategic, data-driven campus and district leadership that maximizes community potential. 

 

Dr. Muñoz is the President of the Board of Directors of the Ector Success Academy Network in Ector ISD, overseeing one of Texas’ foundational in-district charter schools under new legislation, Senate Bill 1882. She oversees the strategic governance of the school network, maximizing the benefit to the students and community. She is honored to have served at all capacities of the P-20 educational pipeline, and avidly pursues opportunities to grow herself, other educational leaders and communities.