Karen Menendez Coller’s academic passion kicked in as a high school student, propelling her eventually to a doctoral degree in public health from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

It was all a part of having arrived in Los Angeles at age 14, a member of an immigrant family from war-torn El Salvador.

“There’s a drive that happens when you see your parents trying so hard,” said Coller, 38, the new executive director of Centro Hispano of Dane County. “I wouldn’t say it was expected of me to succeed. I wanted to succeed.”

Stories of immigrant families are powerful and need to be shared, she said, something she hopes to encourage in her new position.

“U.S.-born generations here sometimes forget that history, and that history is important. You should expect to succeed, not just exist,” Coller said, referring to the children of immigrants. “You should expect that your time here is meaningful, especially because it’s been the result of people fighting for a better life in our countries of origin.”

Centro Hispano, 810 W. Badger Road, is a nonprofit organization that provides social services, job training, educational opportunities and a cultural home to Latinos and other immigrant populations. Coller, who began Aug. 26, is the eighth executive director in the agency’s 30-year history. She succeeds Kent Craig, who left earlier this year to return to school after more than two years leading the organization.

Coller, most recently a faculty member at UCLA, already was planning to move to Madison from L.A. when she learned of the opening at Centro Hispano. Her husband — Dr. Ryan Coller, a pediatrician and Green Bay native — had taken a position at American Family Children’s Hospital. Coller herself was preparing to accept a job offer in public health at UW Hospital, she said.

The Centro Hispano job tugged at her because of the potential to quickly and positively affect people’s lives, she said. She had spent years leading research projects and developing programs addressing things such as unintended pregnancy in the Latino community and teen mental health problems. It was satisfying and important work, she said, but the slow pace of academia sometimes wore on her.

“I wasn’t seeing the impact right away, and it was kind of frustrating,” she said.

Gloria Reyes, a Madison police detective and president of the Centro Hispano board, said Coller impressed the hiring committee with the depth of her knowledge of Latino issues. “Now she’ll be bringing what she learned from her research and turning it into reality,” Reyes said.

One immediate goal for Coller is to strengthen current programs by reducing staff turnover, she said. The agency has an annual budget of $1.4 million and employs 19 people, 15 of them full time.

Longer term, Coller hopes to increase partnerships with other community groups and do more outreach to newly arrived immigrants.

“I’d like families to come here when they first arrive so that we can help stabilize them right away, instead of waiting for a crisis,” she said.

That approach — building strong relationships prior to an emergency — already works well with Centro’s youth programs, Coller said.

Coller’s family immigrated to the U.S. legally at a time when El Salvador was in the midst of a brutal civil war.

“Everybody was affected,” she said. “It was the norm to go to sleep and hear bombs going off in the distance. There were rifles in the streets, and you would get stopped at random checkpoints and have to bribe people to get through.”

Her father, an attorney, had difficulty finding work here and returned to El Salvador for several years while the rest of the family stayed in L.A., a heart-wrenching but familiar sacrifice to many immigrant families, Coller said.

Yet because of California’s large immigrant population, Coller said the adjustment for her was not difficult.

“L.A. is a very special place for immigrants, so I felt at home right away,” she said. “Everyone was extremely welcoming. I think immigrant families here in the Midwest feel a little bit more closed off.”

She earned a bachelor’s degree in cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, then spent a year in Zambia at an HIV counseling and testing site. She returned to the U.S. to earn a master’s degree at the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins, both in public health.

She met her husband while at Johns Hopkins. They live in Middleton and have one daughter, Olivia, almost 2.

Most recently, while on the faculty at UCLA, Coller studied high-achieving schools in L.A. to better understand the environments that lead Latino youths to make good life choices. She already met with Jennifer Cheatham, Madison’s new schools superintendent, to discuss how Centro Hispano’s programs fit with Cheatham’s strategic plan.

“We need strong leaders in the Latino community, and I think she brings that to us,” Reyes said of Coller. “I think she has the skills to take Centro Hispano to the next level.”