About - Mundo Academy

Mundo Academy provides competitively-priced, effective test prep and tutoring services to students in Los Angeles, CA and surrounding areas. We invest our resources and expertise to partner with schools and nonprofit organizations to offer tutoring and test preparation in economically disadvantaged areas in an effort to foster equity in the college admissions process.

We are proud to create an environment that is welcoming of all individuals and is a safe space for people of all ethnicities, gender expressions, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
We seek to nurture students’ academic experience while providing expert guidance.
We give ownership to students of their academic progress.
We support our students in order to empower their academic experience.

Mundo Academy will treat everyone with respect and tolerance.

Marina Grijalva

Founder & President

Marina began her career in education as a teacher immediately after graduating from Pomona College. She obtained a M.A. in Spanish Literature from the University of Texas at El Paso. Her double major in Math and Spanish opened the door to many teaching opportunities at the university, middle and high school levels. Marina’s success with students not only depends on her teaching expertise, but also her patience and willingness to reach her students. Marina creates an environment where adolescents can thrive and tackle academic weaknesses without feeling intimidated.

Marina began her tutoring career in 2008 after working as a classroom teacher for 10 years. Her focus has always been teaching students techniques that will help them find their voice. Because Marina works with students from different geographical and economic areas, she has a clear understanding of the different obstacles students face. Marina is working on expanding her reach in order to help students of color obtain the resources they lack that can have a major impact on their ability to apply and be accepted into the college of their choice.

Marina Grijalva grew up in Calexico, California, which is a small town on the U.S.-Mexico border. Marina’s father worked as a farm laborer in the Imperial Valley while her mother stayed at home raising five children. The youngest of five, Marina is the only person in her family to graduate from a 4-year university.

It is with this mindset, that Marina has created academic coaching and test prep programs that will target the needs of every student.

SUPPORT STAFF AND TUTORS

Monica Ruz

Director of Learning and Instruction

Monica has taught several elementary school grades in various school settings. She is a National Board Certified teacher, has an MA in Educational Psychology from UCSB and an MEd from UCLA. During her time at UCLA Monica was motivated to further help to close the achievement gap often created by policy and institutional practices. Her work at UCLA has been instrumental in her current path and passion to work with Mundo Academy, to aid students and to bring about change for historically underrepresented groups. Her attributes include curriculum design, coaching, teaching strategies, and knowledge of culturally relevant pedagogy.

Thomas Williams

Student Success Coordinator and Humanities Tutor

Tom specialises in socio-political history and studying primary source material, especially literature. His goals include demonstrating how history is relevant to life today, bringing the past to life, and finding unique true interpretations of the human story. He earned his Master of Arts (Honours) undergraduate degree in English and Mediaeval History from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and his Master of Philosophy postgraduate degree in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic from the University of Cambridge in England.

Tom grew up in a military family and lived on a sheep farm in the English countryside for most of his childhood, so he knows how much hard work is required to study and succeed at the highest levels of academia. He has received multiple academic awards, including being named on the Dean’s List for Outstanding Academic Achievement in his final undergraduate year. In his free time, Tom is an avid fan of rugby and soccer, and enjoys video and board games. His favourite class in High School was Theatre Studies.

A good education was not always a guarantee for Tom; he had to work hard for it. He wants to make sure that students who face similar challenges today have the same opportunities for a better life that he did, and he will absolutely do his best to be the tutor that your child needs.

MEET WITH TOM

Rachel McGovern

Math Tutor

Rachel’s experience began in high school where she was a volunteer tutor for students in grades K-5. After graduating Elon University with a degree in mathematics, she moved to Los Angeles and tutored online aside from her full time job at a skincare company. To this day, she still has the pleasure of tutoring students of all ages, backgrounds, and skillsets online. Rachel loves seeing the lightbulb go off in the student’s heads when they grasp a new concept or recognize the pattern within the problem to solve. Eventually, her love for tutoring lead her to want to pursue it as a full time career.

As your tutor, Rachel will not only help your child with the answers, but how to develop their time management, organization, and prioritization skills. When she is not working, you will always be able to find Rachel in dance class or rehearsing with her dance team! She loves to do all styles of dance.

MEET WITH RACHEL

Zoe Juneau

Science and Math Tutor

Zoe Juneau first received an Associate of Science in Physics at College of the Canyons before transferring to UCLA. Here, she continued studying astrophysics with a minor in geophysics and planetary science. After graduating she continued to spend her time researching the evolution of exoplanet orbits; she looks forward to discussing the science and math behind everyday questions with her students, such as: why don’t we fall out of our seats during a rollercoaster loop? How do planes fly? and many others that were first introduced to her in high school. She hopes to further her research in graduate school, and continue teaching others how to love math and science.

Privacy Policy

Thank you for visiting the Mundo Academy website (mundoacademy.com) and for reviewing our privacy policy. This privacy policy discloses the ways our website gathers, uses, discloses, and manages a website user’s personally identifiable information (“PII”). This privacy policy applies only to our Website and not to any offline activities. It does not apply to any third party site or service that may be linked to our Website or recommended or referred by our Website.

PII is information that can be used to distinguish or trace a person’s identity. Examples of PII may include a person’s name or address, parent and family names and addresses, social security number, and geolocation data.

We collect no PII unless you choose to provide that information through use of the Mundo Academy Client form or Contact Us form.

Some of our webpages (such as our Client Form and Contact Us form) let you voluntarily submit PII. In those cases where PII is collected, every attempt will be made to protect your privacy. Mundo Academy does not share, sell, or convey any PII to third parties for marketing purposes. Mundo Academy cannot however, provide any guarantees as to the absolute security of your personal information.

For more information about how we record non-personal information about your visit or how we use information that you voluntarily submit, continue reading:

Non-Personal Information Recorded by Mundo Academy:

If you visit us and do nothing more than browse the site, read pages or download information, the site’s operating system will automatically record some general information about your visit.

We use this information for statistical analysis and to help make the Mundo Academy site more useful to visitors. This tracking system does not record information about individuals.

Cookies

On certain Mundo Academy web pages, “cookies” are used to help with interactive usage of the site. A cookie is a small file that a website transfers to your hard disk, usually to keep track of you while you are connected to that site. Cookies compile statistical data about use of our Website. Cookies may provide us with data usage, frequency of visitations to the Website, where users go on the Website, how much time users spend on the Website, the Website pages users visit the most, and what activities users perform on the Website. None of the statistics include PII.

The cookies on Mundo Academy’s pages do not collect information about you, but only about your browser “session.” The cookie makes it easier for you to use the dynamic features of these web pages, without having to provide the same information again and again as you move from one page to another.

To protect your privacy, be sure to close your browser completely after you have finished conducting business with a website that uses cookies. If you are concerned about potential use of information gathered from your computer by cookies, you can set your browser to prompt you before it accepts a cookie. Most Internet browsers have settings that let you identify and/or reject cookies.

Information from Email

If you decide to send us an electronic mail message (email), the message will usually contain your return email address. If you include PII in your email because you want us to address issues specific to your situation, we may use that information in responding to your request. In other limited circumstances, we may be required by law to disclose information that you submit.

Also, email is not necessarily secure against interception. Please send only information to help us process your request.

Amendment of Privacy Policy

We may change this Privacy Policy at any time by posting a new version on this page or on a successor page. The new version will become effective on the date it is posted.

Updated September 2024

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