SANGER – After earning literary recognition on an international scale, a locally-grown author and educator is using that momentum to leave his mark on the community.
Felipe Mercado, assistant professor of social work at Fresno State and now two-time author, has put the Central Valley on the map as a finalist for this year’s International Latino Book Awards. Mercado’s book, “Rethinking Education Together: How the Wise-Compassionate Framework Transforms Student Success,” is one of four finalists in the Best Reference Category, where it will be moving on to a formal awards show later this year.
Mercado’s book focuses on his Wise-Compassionate Framework, a model for building education systems that focuses not just on academic outcomes, but also: human development, healing, compassion, equity and student success. He developed this framework by pulling from his own lived experiences, research and professional career.
Serving as the culmination of a lifetime of perseverance and scholarship, Mercado hopes this award will boost his book’s message and help change the way professionals approach social work.
“I’m really excited and inspired because as I move forward, I feel like this carries a conversation that I think is really worth having,” said Mercado in an interview. “Maybe this sparks people’s interest to open the book and maybe find some different concepts or perspectives that they’ve been thinking or holding in their heart … or maybe that that they haven’t thought of.”
An arduous upbringing
Mercado said that his dedication to social work stems largely from his difficult childhood, growing up with an abusive father who grappled with drug use and a mother who dealt with mental health struggles since he was young. At age 14, Mercado said he got into a fistfight with his father in defense of his mother and brothers, which ended with him being kicked out and forced to live on the streets.
He managed by sleeping at different friends’ houses when he could, or at the park when there was nowhere else to go, and did so until he was 19. During these years, Mercado said he began using drugs, spent time in juvenile hall and later entered continuation school.
During his senior year of high school, one of Mercado’s teachers intervened and got him connected to a psychologist. He was at risk of getting kicked out of continuation school for low attendance, but his teacher and psychologist wrote letters of support and helped guide him as he underwent an emancipation process, and Mercado was later able to get his absences cleared.
“I had always grown up thinking that I wasn’t really going to make it in life, and that because of my circumstances … I wasn’t going to be able to go to school or make it,” Mercado said. “This was the first time where I actually had a circle of support saying that I could be a good student if I had certain things in place.”
Thanks to this support, Mercado made it to Reedley College, but during this time he was still working through some of his hurtful habits and mental health challenges. He later wound up in jail, and was incarcerated for a few weeks. During this time, his wife was attending Reedley College alongside him, and would communicate with his teachers to gather homework assignments for him to do while in jail.
“My wife and my kids have always supported me through my journey, through all of the trials and tribulations,” Mercado said.
It was around this time that a life-shifting hardship occurred in Mercado’s life. His best friend, David Vera, was shot and murdered. He said Vera’s death “changed my trajectory” from being a business major, and he began considering other career paths.
After graduating from Reedley College, Mercado transferred to Fresno State to study social work, seeing it as a way to change the lives of kids going through the same circumstances that he and Vera had. After earning his bachelor’s degree, he soon entered the master’s program.
Tragedy struck again while Mercado was working on his thesis, as his younger brother Sammy, who went missing just a few months before, was found dead. According to Mercado, he too had been shot and murdered.
This experience pushed him to shift his social work focus specifically to schools, seeking ways to support children and steer them on the right path before tragedies can happen. After earning his master’s, Mercado worked in numerous counseling and leadership roles in school districts across the region while also working toward his doctorate.
Building the framework
Through all of his years experience with schools and social work training programs, he began to see “gaps” in traditional frameworks like Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Support (PBIS), taking notes over time about how he thought they could be improved.
Though Mercado felt that each framework captured pieces of a complex human puzzle, no single one captured the whole picture. With his own Wise-Compassionate Framework, he aimed to emphasize the importance of not just focusing on student performance on paper, but also the real-world factors that contribute to the data.
“I blended them all together and created a framework to help educators really understand how we can create all of the different things that everybody’s talking about: academic success, students showing up and being more regulated, students having more joy, adults liking their jobs better, adults being able to connect better and adults having the training they actually need,” Mercado said.
Mercado began seriously working on “Rethinking Education Together: How the Wise-Compassionate Framework Transforms Student Success” sometime in 2023, and he said it took him about a year-and-a-half to have a manuscript he was happy with.
He previously authored “A Journey to Compassion: Standing Firm in the Face of Pain,” a six-time Amazon bestseller and International Latino Book Awards honoree, which was published by Fig Factor Media. This time, however, Mercado decided to self-publish to avoid editorial changes to his original vision of the book.
Now working at Fresno State by this point, Mercado said he got help from his colleagues to edit the book, and he took to online freelancers on Fiverr to help him format the book and design the cover. Once settling on the final design, the book was published around July 2025.
Mercado found out that his book was an International Latino Book Awards Finalist on the week of Aug. 17, 2026. He admitted that he hasn’t had “the best” summer, not getting as much of a break between semesters as he was hoping, but said that the finalist status was a deeply appreciated piece of news.
“When I saw that award, it just made me feel that sometimes when you’re working so hard, it actually means something,” Mercado said.
Using his position as a social work expert and the teachings in his book, Mercado said he hopes to serve as an inspiration for kids growing up in difficult circumstances. Reflecting on his journey from homelessness to award-winning author, Mercado said he was “lucky” to have educators who invested in him, but recognized that many of his loved ones did not share that same luck.
“I want students to not just get lucky, but for everything to be intentional,” Mercado said. “As I think about this, it really inspires me because I feel like we can create those conditions now. And it’s not just about this award or me, but this award helps me understand that my journey was for a reason.”
Mercado’s work will continue through his consulting and systems-change practice, Wise Souls LLC, which he said is named after a phrase that he and Vera used to refer to one another before his passing.
Wise Souls LLC partners with school districts to implement practices consistent with the Wise-Compassionate Framework, such as leadership and adult wellness, healing-centered and trauma-informed practice, student engagement and much more.
