By Sophia Torres
If you’ve ever found yourself volunteering at a community event in or around Granada Hills, you’ve probably seen a familiar woman scrambling around any given booth making sure that everything is running smoothly. At Granada Hills Charter (GHC), Engagement and Advocacy Specialist Bonnee Lallouz is most known on campus for managing the Student Ambassadors organization. However, she has also inadvertently become a caretaker for the city’s community as a whole through her prominent role as a Chamber of Commerce member and more notably, her networking skills.
Lallouz formed the Student Ambassadors organization back in 2022, with its main purpose being to provide students with opportunities to network and volunteer at local community events throughout the San Fernando Valley. Last year, the organization aided at 41 local community events, and has amassed over 400 student volunteers.
After each event, students get a letter confirming the organization’s name and the amount of hours they worked, which they can then keep and later report to colleges. To Lallouz, providing students with these opportunities is not only a way to help them build their resumes, but something that holds emotional weight as well.
“Building my relationships with the students, especially when I’ve had students with me all four years, we end up becoming like a family,” Lallouz said. “It makes me feel proud to work for Granada when I get emails back from the organizations saying how they don’t know how they would’ve done it without the kids, it makes me feel like a proud mom.”
Along with Student Ambassadors, Lallouz has contributed to GHC in many other ways, including collaborating with and providing funds for other groups at the school. She has chaired and raised money for the golf team’s tournaments, supplied student entertainment for the Parent Teacher Student Association’s (PTSA) Annual Highlander Tea event, has arranged for the jazz band to perform at various Chamber of Commerce events and galas, and has worked with city council to pay for bus and competition fees for DECA.
“I just love Granada and what I do here,” Lallouz said. “I love being a part of the student’s lives. The teachers are brilliant, everyone’s professional. I don’t think there’s ever been a day where I’ve not wanted to go to work. I’m proud to represent Granada.”
If there’s one thing that Lallouz stands by just as much as GHC, it’s networking.
Lallouz wasn’t given her role on the campus and the community. Rather, she earned it through years of building relationships with others and carefully making trades within these relations to help her community.
Lallouz originally came from the hotel industry until she came to the Chamber of Commerce, which is a specific type of nonprofit, focused on common business interests in favor of its members. This moment set up her entire path as she learned to network. This single skill would become the most evident boost to where she is today.
Her work with up to three of the largest Chambers of Commerce in the San Fernando Valley led to her role at Silvan’s Learning Center. She held this position for five years, during which she also developed her own program for the schools the center provided tutoring to. She formed 23 sponsorships with schools, providing them tutoring at no cost and consistently representing them at major festivals and events.
With consistent meetings with government officials like City Councilman John Lee, academic teams, neighborhood councils, and more, Lallouz works to benefit the GHC community in both small and large ways, yet rarely receives the credit for all her underlying work.
“Because I am so connected to the Chambers, when they needed volunteers, they asked me if I knew any students,” Lallouz said. “That grew into the program I call the GHC volunteer Ambassadors.”
To her, networking became more than a skill but the essential branch to her career and impact she has on the lives of the students who she cares so dearly for. Lallouz hopes that GHC will one day offer students a course teaching the prized networking skills that helped bring her here today.
“One thing I always teach is it’s not what you know or who you know,” Lallouz said, “But who knows you.”
