LEADERSHIP IS NOT A TITLE

Vice President of Policy & Legislation, Earthjustice, Earthjustice

The Environmental Advocate

Raúl García brings the legal discipline of Earthjustice to the ecosystem — an environmental advocate who has risen from legislative counsel to Vice President of Policy and Legislation at the nation's premier environmental law organization. He leads a team of advocates working with Congress, federal agencies, and the White House to advance the most consequential policy issues around climate, environmental health, and biodiversity — centering the voices of frontline communities in every campaign.

Environmental justice is not a cause — it is a constitutional obligation.

Augustinian Recollect Priest & Educator | PhD Candidate in Education, Order of Augustinian Recollects / Colegio San Agustín, Panama City

The Spiritual Anchor

Father Pedro Gregorio de Jesús Rivas, OAR, carries the moral authority of a life devoted to faith, education, and the formation of young people across the Americas. An Augustinian Recollect from the Dominican Republic, he served for many years as Head of School at Colegio San Agustín in Panama City — leading one of the order's most important educational institutions in the hemisphere. Now completing his PhD in Education, his doctoral research integrates the Augustinian pedagogical tradition with contemporary questions of educational quality, human dignity, and the formation of ethical citizens.

Education is humanization. The true teacher awakens the interior master.

State Representative, Texas House District 77 (El Paso), Texas House of Representatives

The Border Legislator

Vince Perez has redefined what border leadership looks like — not through rhetoric, but through institutional reinvention. Representing El Paso's District 77 in the Texas House of Representatives, he has authored historic legislation eliminating licensing barriers for Latin American specialty doctors to practice in Texas, turning a healthcare gap into a hemispheric bridge. He legislates from lived experience, understanding that the U.S.-Mexico relationship is not managed from Washington but from the communities that straddle the line.

Health, like justice, should know no barriers.

Director of Media & Audio, University Medical Center El Paso | Sound Designer & Recording Engineer, University Medical Center El Paso

The Sound Architect

Diego Muñiz is a sound designer and recording engineer who started as a teenage techno DJ and producer in El Paso, Texas, moved to Houston to study audio production, landed a sound design position at a local television station two years into his education, recorded artists like Portugal. The Man live, and now directs media and audio editing for University Medical Center in his hometown of El Paso. He served as staff at the 2019 Futuro Summit at Georgetown University — bringing the same ear that shapes broadcast audio and live recording to the ecosystem's flagship gathering.

Sound is not background — it is architecture. He heard that in El Paso and has been building on it ever since.

Chief of Staff, U.S. Representative Jimmy Gomez (CA-34), U.S. Congress

The Capitol Strategist

Carlos Paz Jr. operates where policy meets power — in the corridors of the United States Congress. As Chief of Staff to Representative Jimmy Gomez of California's 34th District, he architects the daily translation of community need into legislative action. His career arc — from community organizing in Houston to the offices of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to the West Wing of congressional leadership — reflects a strategist who learned governance from the ground up.

Governance is an obligation, not a career.

Emmy Award-Winning Documentary Filmmaker, Director & Producer, Independent / Laredo Film Society Co-Founder

The Visual Chronicler

Karen Gaytán is an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose lens captures the stories that institutions forget to tell. Born in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and raised in Laredo, Texas, she carries the U.S.-Mexico borderlands in her work — moving between independent documentary rigor and cinematic beauty to make the invisible visible. Her credits span from National Geographic to Netflix, and she co-founded the Laredo Film Society to build storytelling infrastructure in South Texas.

The border does not only need its stories told. It needs the capacity to tell them.

President & CEO, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute

The Institutional Voice

Marco A. Davis leads the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute — the institutional engine of Latino leadership development in Washington. With more than 25 years of experience spanning the Obama White House, venture philanthropy, and national civic organizations, he has built the pipeline between Latino communities and the corridors of federal power through rigorous, sustained investment in emerging leaders.

Representation requires infrastructure.

Senior Official, DCCC, DCCC

The Political Operative

Analysse Escobar has touched every rung of American public service — from field organizing in Nevada to the White House to the strategic core of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — and at each level, she built the systems that others later walked across. A San Antonio native raised by an educator, she represents a generation of Latina leaders who measure power not in visibility but in the infrastructure they leave behind.

Some leaders speak from podiums. Others speak through the systems they quietly keep running.

Playwright, Actor & Educator | Co-Founder, NeXT | Former Chief Community Liaison, BeNeXT Global, NeXT / BeNeXT Global

The Artist Who Builds Institutions

Adriana Muñiz Lopez is a playwright, actor, singer, and educator who co-founded NeXT — then returned to the stage. A graduate of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, she is an El Paso native who moved between the creative and institutional worlds with a fluency that defines her career: from BeNeXT Global's first Community Liaison to Chief Community Liaison in Panama, from Futuro Summit staff at Georgetown (2019) to the performing arts. She is the rare co-founder who built an institution and then went back to making art — carrying the ecosystem's DNA into every stage she steps onto.

She builds institutions the way she writes plays — with presence, listening, and the willingness to hold a room together.

Physician — Geriatrics & Internal Medicine | Founder, Medikah Health, Medikah Health / University Medical Center of El Paso

The Physician Founder

Dr. Jose Luis Aguirre is a physician who practices on both sides of the border — and builds systems designed to erase the line between them. Board-certified in Geriatrics and Internal Medicine, he practices at University Medical Center of El Paso while founding Medikah Health, a cross-border healthcare platform associated with BeNeXT Global. His trajectory is the border itself made biographical: a B.A. in Psychology from USC, a medical degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez, private practice in Ciudad Juárez, residency at William Beaumont Army Medical Center, a Geriatric Medicine fellowship at Baylor College of Medicine, and now — the construction of digital health infrastructure designed to connect the Americas.

Healthcare innovation must be grounded in clinical reality — on both sides of the border.

Manager, Deloitte | USAID CLA Advisor, Deloitte

The Conflict Strategist

Allen Tullos is a strategy professional who has spent a decade navigating the most complex operating environments on earth — from conflict zones in Lebanon to health system reconstruction in wartime Ukraine — applying the discipline of data-driven analysis to problems that defy simple solutions. A Brownsville, Texas native who started a film club at 16 with a $10,000 grant, interned at the BBC in London, directed Brooklyn get-out-the-vote operations for Obama, and consulted for the State Department on violent extremism in Tripoli, he now manages Deloitte's work on USAID's Ukraine Health Reform Support activity, integrating adaptive management practices to restore a health system and reconnect people to care in a dynamic wartime environment.

The most important analytical work happens in the most difficult environments.

Chief Academic Officer & Co-Founder, NeXT | Cultural Historian, PhD, NeXT / The University of Texas at Austin

The Universe Builder

Andrew Donaldson Hamsher is a cultural historian who earned his PhD from The University of Texas at Austin with a 440-page dissertation on authorship, transmedia storytelling, and the rise of superhero cinema — then applied that same understanding of how universes are built to co-founding NeXT, the ecosystem's accreditation and credentialing platform. His doctoral work, "You've Become Part of a Bigger Universe": Authorship, Stan Lee, and the Rise of Superhero Cinema, is a study of how Marvel Comics industrialized creative collaboration and transformed American popular culture. At NeXT, he does the same thing — builds the architecture for a universe of credentials that recognizes learning wherever it happens.

Every universe needs an architecture. He builds the one that makes learning visible.

Internationalist & Crisis Manager | Cámara de Diputados | NHI Project Administrator, Cámara de Diputados / Fundación Corazones Generosos / National Hispanic Institute

The Caribbean Strategist

Juan Luis Contreras is an internationalist who operates across three worlds simultaneously — Dominican legislative governance, Caribbean philanthropy, and hemispheric youth leadership. With a master's in International Law, Foreign Trade, and International Jurisprudence from ISDE and a degree in International Relations from Universidad Católica Santo Domingo, he brings the rigor of international legal training to a career that spans the Dominican Cámara de Diputados, the Fundación Corazones Generosos, and nearly a decade as Project Administrator at the National Hispanic Institute.

The Caribbean is not peripheral — it is a corridor between worlds.

Intelligence Analyst, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Air Force

The Intelligence Analyst

Getsemani Yañez brings the analytical discipline of U.S. Air Force intelligence to the ecosystem — a mind trained to process complexity, identify patterns, and deliver clarity under pressure. Her service represents the intersection of duty, precision, and hemispheric security — connecting the ecosystem to the institutions that safeguard democratic order.

Clarity is a product of discipline.

Vice President of Digital Communications, National Immigration Forum, National Immigration Forum

The Digital Mobilizer

Marcela Aguirre turns stories into movements. As Vice President of Digital Communications at the National Immigration Forum in Washington, D.C., she leads campaigns that translate the complexity of immigration policy into narratives that move people — literally, from their screens to the halls of Congress. Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, she carries the borderlands in her work: the understanding that the most important stories are told by the people living them.

People show up when they feel seen.