New Beginnings
Dear community,
As we embark on this next chapter of our organization’s growth, we want to take a moment to express our gratitude for the past, present, and future of Gente Organizada. We carry immense appreciation for our roots and for all who helped build Gente into what our movement is today. We especially want to thank our Co-Founder, Jesus Sanchez, for his leadership and service to our organization for the past 13 years. He is a pillar of our community who exemplifies the importance of sharing power. Through a collective governance model, he built a leaderful movement that continues to be dedicated to bringing together generations to access, build, and wield their collective power to achieve justice and equity for Pomona's most vulnerable families. Although he has stepped down from a staff role at Gente, he continues to inspire how we navigate an intergenerational community organizing space.
Gente continues to grow into our shared leadership structure to be more effective, transparent, and responsive to the needs of our community. This organizational design includes our youth-led intergenerational Board of Directors, a Director’s Council, and six pods across the organization that advance our mission of building intergenerational power and wellness for youth and immigrant families in Pomona. Most importantly, it is about sharing power and creating new models to govern our community movement in a way that is aligned with our values.
Our community-led design equips Gente to continue being an organizing hub for community transformation, especially in these increasingly turbulent and uncertain times. Government overreach and institutional violence continue to inflict harm and pose a profound threat to our well-being. We remain committed to fighting for our communities’ rights to exist and thrive.
In solidarity,
Destiny Rivera-Gomez, Board President
Ivan Hernandez, Board Secretary
Gente Organizada Structure
Director’s Council
At Gente, we know there is a more effective way to govern than the traditional, top-down corporate nonprofit model. Since 2023, we have embraced a shared leadership model because we believe our movement is strongest when it is "leaderful." Instead of one person at the top, our Director’s Council leads our daily operations. This structure allows us to live out our values of shared decision-making and collective power in everything we do, from our youth center to our organizing campaigns. Our Director’s Council is comprised of:
Arleen Yaz Alonso, Director of Youth Organizing: Arleen leads our Youth Organizing pod, where they encourage and support Pomona’s young people to develop their social-emotional skills through community building and youth leadership. Youth members learn and practice community care, learn political analysis, and develop their leadership and organizing skills to hold the systems around them accountable.
Ivan Hernandez, Director of Movement Building: Ivan leads our Movement Building pod, where they organize leaders across our social action groups, coalitions, and community through organizing campaigns and social media engagement to build an intergenerational movement that builds power by utilizing effective organizing strategies and developing strategic alliances.
Evelia Rocha, Director of Parent Organizing: Evelia leads our Parent Organizing pod, where they empower parents by engaging in community organizing and leadership development. Our parents learn about their rights, recognize their power, and use their voice to advocate for youth and families in Pomona so that our school district and city place children first.
Anel Hernandez, Director of Healing Justice: Anel leads our Healing Justice pod, where they seek to embody healing justice in our day-to-day interactions with one another and our community by listening deeply and nurturing agency. Their work aims to address widespread generational trauma from systemic violence and oppression by reviving ancestral healing practices and building new, more inclusive ones so that we can impact and transform the consequences of oppression on our bodies, hearts, and minds.
Enrique Haro-Villa, Director of Strategic Communications: Enrique leads our Narrative Change pod, where they train and empower members across Gente’s social action groups to change and control their narratives by equipping them with multimedia tools, qualitative research skills, and strategies for counter-narrative work.
Economic Justice Pod: Operations Team
Supporting the Directors Council, we have a newly formed operations team that leads the Economic Justice (EJ) Pod: Vanessa Rodriguez-Reyes is Manager of Operations and Cassandra Hernandez is Manager of Development. Together, they lead Gente’s finance, administration, and development efforts. Both Vanessa and Cassandra began their journey with Gente as volunteers and now together play a critical role in sustaining our mission and movement.
The EJ Pod exists to ensure our organizers feel resourced and hopeful about our collective future. Specifically, the pod organizes information and resources to sustain the power building and wellness activities of our leaders by centering community organizing and participatory budgeting in our activities. The pod’s initiatives include a collective fundraising model, restorative economies campaigns, archiving projects, among others–all rooted in confronting predatory capitalist structures in our communities.
Network of Support
Our work continues to be fueled by a vast network of dedicated consultants and allies who provide essential support and expertise needed to drive our mission forward.
We are especially excited to welcome attorney Nicole Gon Ochi as our new Legal and Policy Consultant, whose expertise has already proven instrumental in our policy and organizing campaigns. By leaning into the strength of our diverse network, we continue to expand our impact and organize more effectively with our membership base.
Team
Our staff is also growing through our Youth Leadership Development model, known as Cornerstone. Our program model is grounded in the lived experience and leadership of our members. Since 2016, Gente has been working to increase the number of informal work-based learning (WBL) experiences for youth in Pomona by creating our own paid fellowship and internship programs. Geared toward high-school students (14-18) and transitional-aged (18-24) youth, these in-house opportunities focus on providing young people with relevant work experience and training while creating positive change in the community through their programming. Several fellows who participated in the program have transitioned into full- and part-time staff members in the Youth Organizing, Narrative Change, and Healing Justice Pods.
To learn more about our staff, we invite you to visit our website to get to know our team and listen to their audio bios.
Board of Directors
Our organization is proud to be guided by a community-led Board of Directors that is comprised of local youth and parents who live, work, and study right here in the City of Pomona. By keeping leadership in the hands of those we serve, we ensure our vision remains accountable to our people and responsive to our neighborhood's evolving needs.
As our principal governing body, the Board oversees our Director’s Council and manages everything from policy-setting to resource allocation. We are particularly proud to be a youth-led organization, with a majority of our seats held by transitional-aged youth. Every Board member is an active participant in our social action groups, ensuring a direct link between our grassroots work and our highest level of leadership.
Expanding the Table
Last month, we were thrilled to welcome two high school students back to our Board of Directors. Please join us in welcoming our new High School Board Representatives, Alexis Nepamuceno Becerril and Linette Villalpando!
If you have any questions or would like to set up a meeting with our leadership team, please submit your message here.
To stay in the loop with all things Gente Organizada–including events, research publications, and media—please be on the look out for our future newsletters and follow us at @genteorganizada.
