Dr. Leti Cavazos

Dr. Leti Cavazos is the Founder and Board Member of the Cannenta Foundation. She wanted to practice mental health care with an understanding of the Hispanic culture and natural healing that Latinos learned growing up. She first created a for-profit mental health care practice called the Cannenta Center for Healing and Empowerment and a year into the practice, she realized a lot of Hispanic individuals were reaching out who were uninsured, underserved, and undocumented.

As a result, the non-profit, Cannenta Foundation, was created to remove financial, language, and cultural barriers to mental health services. Through the foundation, they started Project Ayuda that provides free or low-cost mental health counseling. But there were not enough Spanish-speaking or bilingual clinicians. 

A 2021 report from the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB) stated that Latino social workers were passing the state exam at a significantly lower rate which resulted in a shortage of Spanish speaking licensed clinicians to provide mental health counseling. Dr. Cavazos wanted to solve this problem and started Project Adelante, where they tutor social work and counseling graduates at no cost to help them pass the state licensure exam. They also pay for the $500 state exam and any cost to retake the exam. After the social worker or counselor has passed the test, the student still has to gain 3,000 hours of supervised practice.