Anita Khashu is the Director of the Four Freedoms Fund. Founded in 2003, the Four Freedoms Fund (FFF) is a national donor collaborative working toward full integration of immigrants as active participants in our democracy. FFF seeks to ensure this outcome by building and supporting a robust local, state, and national infrastructure of immigrants’ rights organizations and leaders. Prior to joining FFF, Anita worked as a non-profit lawyer, manager, and philanthropic advisor in the United States, Latin America, and Africa, managing large and complex non-profit programs, providing direct legal services, conducting research, and providing strategic consulting services to non-profits and philanthropies. Anita was the founding director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Immigration, a scholar in residence at the Center for Inter-American Studies and Programs at Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico (ITAM), and a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society of New York in its criminal practice. Anita serves as a founding board member for the Mexico City-based Institute for Women in Migration (Instituto para las Mujeres en la Migración, A.C.) and the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund.

Jay Sherwin is an independent consultant who works with foundations and other non-profit organizations to develop strategic plans, design programs and initiatives, implement rigorous outcome evaluations and improve communications. Before launching his consulting practice, Jay spent twenty years as a grantmaker for five national, regional and community foundations, specializing in efforts to promote college access and completion for students from low-income and underrepresented communities. As Vice President for Programs at the College Futures Foundation, he managed a grants program that supported 20,000 scholarships for low-income and first generation college students, including hundreds of undocumented students.

From 2014-2016, Jay worked with Immigrants Rising to design and launch the Invest in the Dream initiative, which partnered with scholarship providers nationwide to encourage them to create or expand college scholarship opportunities for undocumented students. Invest in the Dream awarded $750,000 and leveraged another $750,000 from other sources to help more than two hundred undocumented students attend college. Jay also helped to design and launch the Entrepreneurship Fund, which supports undocumented entrepreneurs, and was a member of the team that selected the first round of Entrepreneurship Fund grantees.

As the Program Director of the Contigo Fund, Marco Antonio Quiroga lays the groundwork for and oversees the grant process and distribution of funds to strengthen and network existing agencies and identifies and supports grassroots efforts that advance Latinx and LGBTQ causes and the intersection of these two communities in Central Florida.

Marco has a long history as an advocate for the LGBTQ, immigrant, and racial justice movements, driven as a direct result of his own life experience as an undocumented and queer person of color. He’s worked extensively alongside LGBTQ, Latinx, and immigrant communities in Orlando and throughout Central Florida, including immigration clinics with Central American and Mexican farm workers and their families in Apopka, on the civic education and engagement campaigns with the Puerto Rican and predominantly monolingual Spanish-speaking community in Kissimmee, and with LGBTQ and undocumented youth on capacity building and leadership development efforts throughout Central Florida. Marco also served as the Director of Public Policy at the True Colors Fund and National Field Officer at Immigration Equality and has extensive experience organizing with United We Dream and its Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project (QUIP), the American Federation of Teachers and AFL-CIO, and a number of other grassroots and national advocacy organizations.

Anna is the Program Director for StartUP FIU first Food Incubator. Startup FIU seeks to partner with local food entrepreneurs perusing sustainability and a scalable business model. Prior to joining the team, Ms. Etienne helped launch the first and subsequent cohorts of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses program at Miami Dade College, where she served as the program manager for three years, connected over 200 graduates from among Miami’s local business owners. Ms. Etienne spent the past several years in various roles working within the local South Florida business community, college students, and institutional leaders. Currently a doctoral student studying Organizational Leadership at Northeastern University, Ms. Etienne is also an alumnus of Florida International University with a Bachelors in Business Administration and a Masters in Higher Education Administration.

Gladys Castro works to provide loans to small-business owners in the nine Bay Area counties. Prior to joining MEDA, Gladys worked one-on-one with small businesses at the startup level to help them establish a strong foundation through a business plan, understanding of financial statements and the development of a marketing strategy.

Gladys attended UC Berkeley where she studied Political Science and Education. Outside of work, Gladys likes to cook new recipes, which occasionally result in disaster.

Originally from Houston, Texas, Jesse found his way to San Francisco in March 1997 where he first experienced what it meant to work for a startup. As employee 27, he got to see firsthand the building of a Silicon Valley company (funded by Sequoia Capital) that ultimately grew into a thousand employee+ corporation all in less than a year as it was acquired for $180 million by Frontier Communications. That experience and access to his new mentors/advisors, led Jesse to cofound along with his brother in 1998 one of the first U.S. online bilingual Latino communities (Picosito.com) which was recognized by a U.S. Congressional Record by the House of Representatives in 1999 for their efforts around technology in Latino Community. They raised $2.3 million in seed capital and had two acquisition offers in less than six months. After the dot com era, Jesse went back to Corporate America; he has over 10 years in the BPM industry & has worked with industry leaders such as Xerox Global Services, IKON, & Kofax as a Business Development Manager. He was also the cofounder of his 2nd startup – Giggo, a groupon-like venture delivering their messaging all in Spanish. He was the cofounder/COO of histhird startup – Relevance, which took him to Brazil as the country director under the Startup Brasil Program. Jesse is the cofounder + co-chair of the Latino Startup Alliance, a non-profit supporting global Latino Tech Entrepreneurs and startup ecosystems. He is also the cofounder of dev/Mission, a non-profit focused on training diverse youth ages 16 to 24 for careers in tech.
Most recently, Jesse was the first Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) for the Salesforce Incubator (now Accelerate) where he incubated his fourth startup CareerForce – training the next generation of Salesforce Administrators that come from our diverse and underrepresented communities for career paths in the Salesforce Economy.

Natalia is an organizational psychologist, strategist, and technologist focused on merging innovation, entrepreneurship, and community impact. Her passion hinges on creating communities that are true ecosystems, most recently by leading the expansion of the Cambridge Innovation Center (CIC) to Miami. CIC is the oldest, most successful, and largest innovation hub in the United States, espousing particular philosophies for economic impact and community engagement. In Miami, CIC is building an innovation district that connects the health district with the rest of the innovation corridor – a massive and transformative undertaking that is already having an impact. In addition, Natalia is the Founder of Awesome Foundation MIAMI, the local chapter of a global network of grassroots micro-grant giving hubs that, cumulatively, have awarded more than $1.6 million globally to small, local ideas. The Miami chapter has awarded more than $75,000 to more than 70 grassroots ideas in Miami, helping to empower the average person to participate with their ideas and projects. She also serves as the Vice President of LatAm expansion of the Latino Startup Alliance and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers community. For this and other work, Natalia has also been appointed by Florida Governor Rick Scott to serve on the Governor’s Commission on Community Service, a body that oversees the administration of $32 million in federal, state, and local funding to deliver high-impact educational and volunteer programs in Florida.