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Latinas Represent: Empowering Latina Leaders Nationwide

At the start of 2024, re:power Fund partnered with Latinas Represent to launch an 8-week Latina Electeds Academy. This innovative program aimed to empower Latina elected officials across the country by enhancing their leadership skills and fostering a supportive community.

The academy brought together 33 Latina leaders for a series of virtual sessions that combined elements from re:power’s Women of Color Leadership Cohort and the Progressive Governance Academy. Designed to amplify leadership abilities while building connections and promoting continued growth, the program focused heavily on heart work—addressing the holistic needs of women of color to step into authentic, liberated leadership. Over eight weeks, participants explored topics such as power mapping, relational organizing, coalition building, and preventing burnout, equipping them with the tools they needed to excel in their roles.

Throughout the rest of the year, Latinas Represent will be sharing stories from the inaugural cohort members of the Elected Academy. Check out this message from Latinas Represent’s Executive Director, Stephanie Lopez, about the new program.

Video by Latinas Represent

As we move forward, re:power is excited to continue supporting Latina leaders in their journeys to make meaningful change in their communities. We look forward to expanding this partnership and witnessing the incredible impact these leaders will have in 2024 and beyond!

Who’s in the room: CSIO Edition

In June, re:power brought organizers from across the country together in Phoenix for the first in-person Campaign School for Issue Organizing program. The 2.5-day training covered everything from the fundamentals of campaign strategy to building volunteer programs, developing a fundraising plan, targeting voters through VAN, script-building, and more. The curriculum builds on the ethos that effective organizing isn’t just about securing electoral wins; it requires year-round base-building to sustain meaningful victories, and that work lives with the organizers who are building power around the issues that affect the day-to-day lives of their communities.

From seasoned veterans to fresh faces just beginning their organizing journey – the space offered teachable moments beyond the front of the room; in fact, the participants learned a great deal in their group work. 

Here are four inspiring organizers who joined us for this training. We connected with them to learn more about their organizations, recent projects, and lessons learned:

Jazmin Albertie (she/they)
Patterson, California
Data and Digital Organizing Manager

Jazmin Albertie

Jazmin works at PICO California, the largest multi-faith-based community organizing network in the state of California. Their mission imagines a new kind of economy — a moral one — in which basic life necessities are met (food, housing, jobs, healthcare, education, etc) so Californians from all walks of life can live in dignity and safety. In her work, Jazmin analyzes and synthesizes electoral data, invites people to in-person and digital actions, and supports voter contact efforts, like phone banks, text banks, and canvasses. Jazmin is currently revamping PICO’s welcome series, integrating the lesson on ladders of engagement to meet members where they are.

Kassandra Ramirez  (she/her/ella)
Nacogdoches, Texas
Rural Organizing Manager

Kasandra Ramirez

Currently, Kassandra works for Este Poder, a Latinx women-led organization centering young east Texans for their civic engagement and advocacy. Kassandra works directly with the youth through the student fellow program, coordinating with high schoolers and college students to equip them with the civic education and tools to become life-long voters. She took back to her team the lesson around the ladder of engagement and the four Cs to expand Este Poder’s reach into the community.

Cris Cuevas (all pronouns)
Boise, Idaho
Policy and Community Organizer

Cris Cuevas

Cris works at Poder Idaho, a Latinx-led organization empowering and uplifting immigrant and Latinx communities in Idaho through advocacy in five primary areas: economic justice, immigration, education, and labor & gender equity. Their most recent campaign, “Manejando Sin Miedo,” which means driving without fear, focuses on supporting legislation for driver’s licenses for all, regardless of documentation and status. The statement, “culture will eat strategy for breakfast,” resonated with Cris, who took the lesson to heart on how to build a resilient campaign culture.

Anvita Kandru (she/her/hers)
Coppell, Texas
Community Organizer

Anvita Kandru

SAAVETX Education Fund is a South-Asian women-led organization harnessing the political power of South Asians, the largest and fastest-growing minority in Texas; they operate statewide through civic engagement efforts and political education. Anvita works on translating voting materials in different South Asian languages since language access is a barrier to many non-English speakers and integrating those documents into their GOTV.  Anvita introduced to her team a more defined theory of change and a robust base-building strategy to move their people through the funnel of leadership development.

Empire Health Foundation

At the end of 2023, our Movement Building program partnered with the Empire Health Foundation (based in Spokane, WA) to support them in developing local BIPOC organizing capacity through training their grantee organizations. An all-WoC team led a 2-day Storytelling Workshop, customized to support participants in identifying real world applications for storytelling in organizing, which they got to practice live. We followed that up with a 2-day Train-the-Trainers with a select group of participants from the original cohort, who will be supported locally to continue to transmit these practices to other leaders and organizations.

Video by Empire Health Foundation

For 2024, Empire Health Foundation is seeing re:power as a key partner in developing local capacity and they have asked us to set up a partner contract where we’ll reserve close to 80 seats in public trainings across all our program areas for EHF grantees. We’re excited about the impact that can result from having so many participants from a single region sitting in all our programs and we look forward to continuing to support those organizations in 2024 and beyond.

State Voices Women of Color Cohort

From September to December, re:power facilitated a 9-week Women of Color Leadership Development Cohort for a group of 20 staff from across State Voices’ network, who hold roles ranging from Communications Associate to Organizing Director to Development Manager. The State Voices network now has more women of color staff than ever before and this program is focused on investing in their leadership and growth. 

We deepened our connection to State Voices after one of their staff participated in our February 2023 public cohort and recommended the program to the State Voices network. This participant stated:

“The content shared and worked through was unexpected but so needed—I love how you all connect everyday things that we often use for coping mechanisms as a way to harness our leadership and feel more connected to our inner selves. Thank y’all ❤️ “

State Voices participants from the Winter 2023 Cohort were enlightened and refreshed from their recent cohort experience. Many stated this opportunity helped them connect on a deeper level with other State Voices staff which enhances the work they do across the State Voices table.

“Thank you for the opportunity to be in this space and to heal. We as women of color do need to heal ourselves before we can heal the community.”

WoC – State Voices cohort member

Our WOC Cohort Alum are ambassadors for re:power and they stay connected to re:power by attending additional trainings, becoming facilitators for the cohort, and facilitating opportunities for re:power to partner with other organizations.

We look forward to seeing how our growing base of WoC alumni will continue engaging with us and championing our work in the future!

“This is magical and it works.”

WoC – State Voices cohort member

Boston Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement

From May to August, we partnered with the Boston Mayor’s Office for Immigrant Advancement (MOIA) to train 15 immigrant residents of the city in grassroots organizing, as part of their “Immigrants Lead Boston” (ILB) program. The ILB has run for the past 4 years as a civic education project, helping immigrant residents of Boston navigate local government, but was reimagined this year into a unique collaboration with re:power.

Working closely with the Executive Director of MOIA, Monique Tú Nguyen, the Movement Building team rebuilt the program from scratch to focus on community organizing skills—helping the cohort learn how to share stories, build relationships, build teams and strategy, and take action alongside their communities.

re:power Director of Movement Building Programs Conrado Santos speaks at the ILB graduation ceremony. Photo courtesy of City of Boston Mayor’s Office.

The program was a success and concluded with a beautiful in-person graduation ceremony at Boston City Hall, where participants were granted certificates by Mayor Michelle Wu. Our team is also in early conversations about potential new avenues for continuing the partnership, including training graduates on how to lead sessions in their native languages, expanding the program, and more!

ILB graduation ceremony. Photo courtesy of City of Boston Mayor’s Office.
Fresh graduates of the ILB program. Photo courtesy of City of Boston Mayor’s Office.