Crystal Araujo has over 12 years of political experience with California and local politics. She is a consultant to candidates running for public office and elected officials serving the community. She also consults private businesses and nonprofits on government relations. Specializing in policy, community engagement, and messaging, Crystal is a fundraiser specializing in strategic donor and political network development.

Raquel Castañeda-López is an Executive Coach for Womxn of color in public office and leadership. In 2013, she made history by becoming the first Latina elected to the Detroit City Council. During her tenure she elevated the conversation around equitable development and racial, social, and environmental justice, successfully passing historic legislation to address these inequities. 

After serving eight years as a Council Member she stepped down to found The Restorative Democracy Project (RDP), the only holistic coaching program training current and former Womxn of Color public officials in governance, transformative leadership, and restorative practices. She is currently developing the program as a Leadership in Government Fellow with the Open Society Foundation.

A social worker by trade, Raquel has over two decades of experience in training and facilitation. For nearly a decade she has served on the board and trained non-traditional candidates to run for office with New American Leaders. She’s traveled globally to study transformative democratic practices as a member of the BMW Foundation’s Responsible Leaders Network and the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Inclusion Leaders Network. 

Rebecca Dominguez first started working in politics at the age of 16, where she would volunteer after school for campaigns. At just the age of 26 years old, she has been working on campaigns for nearly the past decade. Due to learning about her mixed immigrant family, she wanted to figure out a way to make a difference for her community; she found that passion by connecting with voters one on one at the doors. After being a canvasser through most of her adolescence, she started getting hired for leadership positions as an organizer, and eventually a field director. Over the years, Rebecca has had a track record of running effective and successful field programs. She has developed and managed field and organizing programs for electoral campaigns, 501 C-3 nonprofits, and political consulting firms. Her work ranges from a wide variety of campaigns including: statewide initiatives, local city council and state house races, issue-based campaigns, congressional campaigns, and presidential campaigns. She started her own political consulting firm– Dominguez Consulting Group LLC., where she hopes to help elect more women of color to office through field, data, and campaign management.

Judith Garcia is the Communications Manager at The Neighborhood Developers and currently serves on the Chelsea City Council. She is the first Honduran American to serve on the council, as well as the first woman to Chair the City’s Charter Review Commission. She has built her career in a variety of roles and industries, mostly in the public and nonprofit sectors. Most recently, she was instrumental in the Latinx communications and grassroots efforts for Joe Kennedy III senate race. 

Prior to that, she worked for Rapid7, a leading cybersecurity company, helping top-notch companies secure their networks. From 2016 to 2018, she served on multiple diplomatic missions in Taiwan, Belgium, and Russia advocating for social issues that are important to her such as housing stability, immigration, education, and economic development. Her steadfast commitment during the pandemic has been featured on a PBS documentary called Latinos are Essential. Her extensive work in local government has earned her multiple accolades including being recognized as a Latino Boston 30 under 30 by El Mundo Newspaper in 2016.

Irene Godínez is a North Carolinian of Mexican heritage raised in Durham. Irene is the Founder and Executive Director of Poder NC Action, a 501(c)(4) organization that is building people power alongside young Latinxs across North Carolina. Poder leans into its cultural organizing to connect with its base and to mobilize toward independent political power that is grounded in principles, values, and love. Poder NC is pro-Black, pro-Latinx, pro-LGBTQ+, and pro-reproductive justice. 

Irene has worked for local, state, and national organizations on advancing immigrant and reproductive rights. Her work at issue-based nonprofits, coupled with her campaign experience, and leadership coaching of elected officials crystallized her mission – to build equitable political representation for underserved communities and to create an intentional civic leadership pipeline for Black and Brown youth.   

Irene has 18 years experience in nonprofit management, community mobilization and engagement, lobbying, coalition-building, advocacy, media relations, political strategy, and public speaking. She is a risk-taker for justice, office-supply junkie, recovering perfectionist, and committed to nurturing spaces that enable others to show up authentically. Irene lives and plays in Raleigh, NC with the most authentic person she has ever known, her 6-year-old truth-telling daughter, Emerald.

Eunisses Hernandez is a daughter of Mexican migrants, a policy advocate, community organizing leader, and a lifelong resident of district 1. She has been a direct witness to the gentrification and displacement of her community and her experiences have driven her to effect change at every level of government.

For her entire career, Eunisses has worked with local and state legislators, policymakers, and the communities most devastated by criminalization, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration. As a leader in the Justice LA coalition, she helped stop a $3.5 billion dollar jail plan in Los Angeles County. She worked to pass Measure J, along with other policies and budget demands, which have begun to drive hundreds of millions of dollars into expanding and creating access to community-based services, housing, and support for young people in Los Angeles County. Her efforts have led to the repeal and reform of some of the most harmful policies in California that have consistently targeted youth of color in LA.

Kendra is a proud first-generation Black Dominican woman, a mother, a wife, and an artist. Born in the Bronx to a working-class, immigrant mother, Kendra’s family relocated to Jamaica Plain and has since called it home. 

As a first-year high school student, Kendra co-founded and later became the director of the influential and celebrated “by-youth, for-youth” organization Beantown Society. Like many young people of color in Boston, Kendra was directly impacted by gang violence. Because of her activist perspective, she quickly saw how her experiences with community violence were explicitly tied to poverty and racism. With her eyes open wide, she stepped in and at the age of 19, Kendra became one of a handful of women and the youngest in the city to provide trauma-informed support to young people as a StreetWorker with the StreetSafe Boston Initiative. 

Before becoming the first person of color to represent District Six on the Boston City Council, Kendra was the Director of Radical Philanthropy at the historic Boston-based organization Resist. Founded by world-renowned activist Noam Chomsky just over 50 years ago, Resist grew — with Lara at the helm — into a leading force for racial and economic justice. Anchored by a socialist vision and a commitment to bring the margins to the center, Kendra uses her head, heart, and hands to push communities and local governments to use their imaginations and the resources at hand to expand beyond the realms of possibility towards liberation.

Born in the Dominican Republic, City Councilor At-Large, Julia Mejia arrived in Boston, Massachusetts when she was five years old. Raised by a single mother who was undocumented for most of her childhood, Julia was forced at an early age to speak up on behalf of her mother and others who felt ignored by the very institutions that were supposed to serve them.

Driven by a lifelong pursuit of justice and equity, Councilor Mejia has created countless opportunities for others to step into their power and advocate for positive change as a community organizer. Following the 2019 election AND a historic two-month recount, Councilor Mejia won her seat by a single vote and is now the first Afro-Latina elected to the Boston City Council. Mejia is currently the Chair of the Committee on Education, the Committee on Government Accountability, Transparency, and Accessibility as well as the Committee on Labor, Workforce, and Economic Development.

A third-generation Panamanian, Sandy Nurse is the daughter of an immigrant and was raised by a working single mother. For nearly a decade, Sandy has been working in Bushwick and supporting projects in East New York that empower women and young people of color. Most of her work has been dedicated to ending white supremacy, fighting for a transition away from the fossil fuel economy, and demanding our public agencies and servants are accountable to the people, not corporations.

Through years of strong community partnerships and collaborations, Sandy has built neighborhood institutions that directly strengthen grassroots movements in Bushwick and East New York. She has committed her life to address issues through direct interventions and solutions including building farms in our food deserts, creating jobs where we have high unemployment, and helping develop community space where it was scarce.

As a City Council Member, she fights to keep people in their homes, create protections for our immigrant neighbors, and help to build a healthy, sustainable future.

Luisa Peña Lyons is a Founding Partner at Transformative Change Partners, LLC where she spends a lot of her time supporting candidates at all levels across Massachusetts with a focus on women, people of color, and those of low-income and working-class backgrounds. Luisa is often thinking of ways to redesign the electoral process and change the philanthropic space. Additionally, Luisa leads a national team of coaches as the Director, Candidate Engagement at #VOTEPROCHOICE. 

Previously, Luisa served as Political Director for Ayanna Pressley’s Congressional race. She also served as Deputy Director of Personnel for Governor Deval Patrick, where she focused on providing access and opportunity to a diverse pipeline of candidates for state-level positions and was Deputy Field Director on the winning campaign of Massachusetts’ first Latina State Senator, Sonia Chang-Diaz, where she also served as Legislative Aide. She began her career over a decade ago as the Coalition Organizer for MassVOTE working to support nonprofit organizations that register, educate, and mobilize disenfranchised voters in Greater Boston. She also coordinated recruitment for the Initiative for Diversity in Civic Leadership, which helped prepare individuals of color to run for office or participate in government.

Luisa is originally from Lawrence and Methuen, Massachusetts. She is a graduate of the Kennedy School with a Mid-Career Master’s in Public Administration where she was a first-generation college student and a Center for Public Leadership Fellow. She also has a Bachelor’s from Northeastern University, where she majored in Political Science and International Affairs. Luisa studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt where she participated in election monitoring and pro-democracy work. Luisa’s past and current affiliations have included working with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Amplify Latinx/ Latina Circle. She currently resides in Milton, MA with her husband, Jesse, and daughters, Ellie and Mia. 

Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez has delivered improvements to her ward’s neighborhood schools, brought affordable housing to the ward, and championed innovative programs for public health and safety. 

In her first four years, Rossana has increased ward democracy by giving neighbors a vote in important decisions in the ward and has helped transform City Hall by ensuring it is no longer a rubber stamp for the mayor. She worked to codify Chicago as a sanctuary city for immigrants and recently led legislation to codify protections for abortion and gender-affirming care. In her next term, Rossana will continue to fight to make Chicago a city that provides for the many, not the few.

Rossana is a mother, youth educator, and lifelong community activist. She is currently completing her Masters in Social Work from Northeastern Illinois University. Originally from Puerto Rico, Rossana attended her first demonstration at the age of six, when her neighborhood of Mariana waged a successful battle for public access to drinking water.

Luisa Santos moved to Miami from Bogota, Colombia as a child. After discovering she was an undocumented student in high school, college seemed an impossibility, but she persisted and began higher education at Miami Dade College.

While completing her studies at Georgetown University, Luisa worked with the U.S. Department of Education in Washington, DC, and saw firsthand how teachers and school staff can change lives while leading a program for historically underserved students. Luisa came home to Miami to launch her own business, Lulu’s Ice Cream, where over the course of eight years she reimagined what students could learn in the workplace before selling the business.

Luisa’s story has been featured in Forbes, Glamour, and even the White House, where she spoke during the Latinas in the U.S. Summit. She was named the Florida Young Entrepreneur of the Year by the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Luisa’s career narrative as a change agent, thought leader, mentor, and education advocate was built on what our public schools taught her. She now serves as the Miami-Dade County Public Schools, District 9 School Board Member.