Raised in Sonora, Mexico Maria-Fernanda Quimbar Blackburn moved to the United States in the year 2000.  She was an exchange student in Boston, Massachusetts at Hebrew College, where she studied English as a Second Language.  She graduated in 1995, summa cum laude, from the Instituto Tecnologico de Sonora with a Bachelor of Science in Education. After graduation, she taught Theories of Education at her alma mater and worked at Instituto SENDA, a Bilingual Institution, where she taught core content classes in both Spanish and English to elementary students. She has been certified in Thinking Skills Development by the  Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico where she was a High School teacher. In 1998, she studied English, Art, Literature, and Latin-American Geography at the University of Texas at Austin.  Additionally, she has taught remedial Spanish Writing and Oral Expression at the college level at Instituto Tecnologico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico.

Following her early teaching years, Mrs. Blackburn spent four years as a full-time Parent Volunteer in Anchorage, Alaska schools. She has worked at Judson ISD as a Response to Intervention (RtI) teacher for the past ten years, when she had the honor of being a part of the founding faculty at Escondido Elementary. She has been certified as a Generalist, EC through 6th grade by the State of Texas.