Lesly Tejero Baker
Lesly Tejero Baker was born in Southeast Asia & immigrated to the US as a child. Starting in the Deep South, then flip-flopping between the West Coast for several years & then two decades in the Midwest, Lesly spent her teens & early adult years in the California Bay Area. She’s grateful & happy to settle in & now call the Motherlode Home for her & her family.
Lesly attended both San Francisco State University & Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and immediately started her earliest career as a Paralegal: First working in the area of Criminal Justice, within multiple municipal government agencies, including two Bay Area District Attorneys’ Offices, and then an Illinois County Clerk, as an Elections Executive in Election Law, helping to bring optical scan technology and voting to that county post-2000 “hanging chads” election: selecting the optical scan voting machines, building the manual & training Election Judges on the new process. Then she moved on to the corporate world: over ten years with Walgreens Co. headquarters in real estate law, as sole Lease Administrator/Paralegal for their tens of thousands of longterm store leases, and finally, working on SNDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) for Laserage Corp. & their highly sophisticated, patented technology used by aerospace & medical industries. But all that changed when her greatest “Loves-of-her-Life & Soul’s Destiny”–her son & daughter–started Elementary School.
Lesly began working one-on-one with special education students in the lower grades, and then moving on to being a Teacher’s Instructional Aide at both public & specialized schools such as charter or science academy schools. At the same time, she never stopped doing the things she loved on her own time–that being, pursuing her artistic expression, which began at a very young age, before she even started preschool herself! She would work for public &/or private schools during the day, and teach and perform cultural dance in the evenings and on weekends. She has danced internationally, as well as all across the US, both as a solo dance artist & with her troupe. Lesly continues to choreograph, direct, train her student dance troupe, and has also taught adults when booked by corporate or governmental agencies, such as Discover Card Intl. & Great Lakes Naval Base, USN. She has taught through Parks-&-Rec. Depts., as well as schools and YMCA’s all across the country. It was only a matter of time when she would combine her fulfilling work through teaching, her love of children, and expressing herself thru visual & performing Arts. Lesly still teaches & performs cultural dance, and also currently serves as the Educational & Community Outreach Coordinator for Tuolumne County Arts (TCA).
Lesly has acted on stage and on films, but is most passionate about her favorite & current role in the one-woman historical play set in No. California during the Gold Rush era, written by Rick Foster for Duende Drama & Literature, Gunpowder Man. This play resonates very deeply with her, not only because of the excellent writing, the shared cultural background from Asian birth to adoptive home country in Northern California Sierra foothills region/the Motherlode area of the United States that she shares with the title character, but also because she feels that this play could’ve been her exact life, if it was set in the 19th century. She also believes, with history being cyclical, that Gunpowder Man and the message at the heart of its story is just as relevant today, as it ever was. She hopes to continue acting in her signature role, as well as consider performing other new roles that come her way.
As of early 2026, Lesly made her directorial debut with MYACT’s (Mountain Youth & Community Theater’s) SHREK Kids the Musical, a 14-show, two-week run with a cast of 55 kids, ages 7 to 14 years old, a wonderful experience (directing) she hopes to continue. She plans to continue growing, learning, applying, creating in the Arts world, especially with Duende Drama & Literature.