Dr. Gabriela C. Zapata received her PhD in Spanish (Linguistics track) from the Pennsylvania State University in 2002. She is Associate Professor in the Department of Hispanic Studies at Texas A&M University. Her research foci are second (L2) and heritage language (HL) acquisition and pedagogy, bilingualism, and teacher education. She is also interested in the development of OER materials for L2 and HL teaching and in interdisciplinary projects on Spanish for the Professions. Dr. Zapata has served as Director or Coordinator of six Spanish and Portuguese basic language programs in public and private universities in the United States and Canada. Throughout her career, she has published articles in a variety of peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. She is the main author of the first edition of the Canadian edition of Puntos de partida and the first volume of the OER L2 Spanish textbook Trayectos (published digitally by COERLL). Dr. Zapata is also the co-editor (with Dr. Manel Lacorte) of the volume Multiliteracies Pedagogy and Language Learning: Teaching Spanish to Heritage Speakers (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). At present, she is working on a collaborative book project (to be published by Editorial Octaedro) with Drs. Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope, and she is writing the second volume of Trayectos with a team of graduate and undergraduate students at Texas A&M University. Dr. Zapata is a Certified ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview Tester in Spanish, an ACTFL mentor, vice-chair of ACTFL’s Spanish for Heritage Learners Special Interest Group, and the recipient of the 2019 SGA Open Education Champion Award from the Student Government Association at Texas A&M University.