Cristina Tzintzún, Executive Director
Cristina has worked with WDP since 2003, first as a community organizer, and more recently as director. Cristina assisted WDP in developing its advocacy and leadership development components, and under her leadership the organization’s program work has grown dramatically. Cristina holds a B.A. in Latin American studies and a minor in history from the University of Texas at Austin. As a daughter of a Mexican immigrant and granddaughter of a Bracero (a guest worker program in the U.S. that existed from 1942-1964), Cristina knows of the daily struggles immigrant families face, and has dedicated herself to achieving social justice for Latina/o immigrants. She is co-founder of the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition, and sat on the organization’s steering committee for two years. She has carried out extensive research on indigenous Mexican migrants in the United States and its impact on indigenous communities. She is also a co-founder of Refugio, a center for community organizing in Austin, Texas for low-income people of color. She currently sits on the advisory board of the Community Engagement Center of the University of Texas at Austin, where she counsels faculty on community and academic collaboration. Cristina is also a published author on issues of race, class, and gender. Her work has appeared in “Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism”, “Yes Means, Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape,” and “The Women’s Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third Wave Feminism.“ She has also worked with Latina/o immigrants in Ohio, as a family service advocate with Migrant Head Start, and as an ESL instructor.

Emily Timm, Policy Analyst
Emily holds a B.A. in international development studies from Brown University. She has worked with low-income workers in Maryland, Rhode Island and Texas for over 10 years as an organizer and advocate. She has worked with Workers Defense Project since 2004 and is a co-author of Building Austin, Building Injustice: Working Conditions in Austin’s Construction Industry, which uncovered widespread safety and wage violations on construction work sites in Austin. Emily currently oversees WDP’s Community Organizing for Change program and is working with WDP’s Construction Worker Committee on the Build a Better Texas Campaign to win safe and dignified working conditions for construction workers in Texas. Emily is committed to social and economic justice for all and believes that real change is only possible when it is led by those who have experienced oppression first-hand.

Patricia Zavala, Workplace Justice Coordinator

Patricia holds a bachelor’s degree in global studies from the University of California Santa Barbara, where she graduated with honors. Patricia traveled extensively under the Global Studies Program studying cultural anthropology in Argentina and Bolivia. Patricia has held various administrative and organizing positions, including serving as office manager for a multi-city apartment management group. She currently sits on the board of the Austin Immigrants Rights Coalition (AIRC), where she has been a lead organizer on its criminal justice campaigns. As the daughter of Peruvian immigrants Patricia is particularly concerned with ensuring equal opportunities for immigrants.

Kandace Vallejo, Membership Programs Coordinator
Kandace Vallejo is from Tampa, Florida and comes to the table with over six years of experience organizing for economic and social justice.  Over the years she has worked with and held leadership positions within such diverse organizations as the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Student/Farmworker Alliance, the Energy Action Coalition, the Brazilian MST (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra, or Landless Worker’s Movement), and Student Environmental Action Coalition.  Kandace recognizes the important role that leadership development and education play in building social movements, and her varied organizing experiences lend her a number of transferable skills and much knowledge to bring to the table in her current position as Membership Programs Coordinator at Workers Defense Project.  Kandace holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Southern Illinois University and a master’s degree in education from the University of Texas at Austin, and she has co-published works featured in the recent AK Press release “Uses of a Whirlwind” and in “Be the Change: Teacher, Activist, Global Citizen.”  In May 2011, Kandace was awarded a Food and Community Fellowship from the Kellogg Foundation and the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.

Bianca Hinz-Foley, Intake Coordinator
Bianca is a Plan II student at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently studying Latin American, Russian, and African history of social movements, cultural and activist anthropology, and Spanish/English literature. In 2000, she attended German public school for one year in East Berlin and traveled throughout Europe. Having traveled extensively throughout Mexico and studying abroad in Mexico City for nine months, she learned the politics that drive many to work in the U.S. under conditions that often constitute gross violations of their human rights. Since then, she has volunteered extensively for the Workers Defense Project as a workers rights speaker, advocate, and now is on staff as intake coordinator. Focusing her efforts in the movement for workers’ rights on the U.S.-Mexico border and in Austin, she has volunteered for various other non-profit organizations, including the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition and Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera (ATCF). Over the last two years, she has led two ATCF delegations to the border towns of Piedras Negras, Ciudad Acuña, and Reynosa to listen to the testimonies of workers in U.S.-owned sweatshops. She hopes to continue organizing around the issue of sweatshop labor in the collegiate apparel industry at UT. The product of Mexican, German and Irish immigrants, Bianca is deeply invested in the movement for immigrant workers’ rights and social justice.

Jason Cato, Workforce Development Trainer

Jason is the newest member on staff at Workers Defense Project. A former roadway construction worker, Jason has over 10 years of research and community organizing experience. He collaborated with Workers Defense Project for over two years as a workplace justice advocate, graphic designer, grant writer, and photographer. In addition to his work at Workers Defense, Jason is an employment rights delegate for Austin Tan Cerca de la Frontera, a member of the board of directors of the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition, and a Scholar in Residence at the ACLU of Texas, where he directs a research project on the effects of federal immigration enforcement programs in Travis County. Growing up near the assembly lines of the circuit board manufacturing plants where his father worked exposed Jason to the realities of immigrant labor early on and inspires his work as a photographer. His photography, which explores the everyday lives of low-wage workers, has appeared in The Berkeley Review of Latin American Studies, Left Turn, Dollars & Sense, The Austin Chronicle, the prestigious Syracuse Cultural Workers annual calendar, Workers Defense Project’s report entitled Building Austin, Building Injustice, and numerous other publications. He is a Ph.D. candidate in the UT Austin Department of Anthropology and holds a master’s degree in ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley.

Normalicia Flores, Office Manager
Normalicia earned an associate’s degree in business administration from Austin Community College and a bachelor’s in accounting from the University of Texas at Austin. She has worked in the accounting field for 11 years and with non-profits for five years. Her long term goal is to open an accounting firm which caters solely to non-profit organizations in the Texas area. Normalicia is currently a member of the National Bookkeepers Association, Virtual Assistant Networking and Texas Young Professionals.

 

Candace López, Development Manager
Candace López comes to Workers Defense Project with over seven years of organizing and fundraising experience with multiple non-profits in Southern California and Texas. She began her work in Los Angeles, California as the Membership, Events and Student Programs Coordinator for the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and the Membership Coordinator for the ACLU of Southern California. Additionally, she was a lead volunteer organizer for four years for the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center’s Vote for Equality Campaign, a marriage equality campaign. She also co-coordinated multiple fundraisers aimed at bringing awareness to issues of gender violence, including VDAY: To Stop the Violence Against Women. She holds a B.A. from Pepperdine University in Intercultural Communication and an M.A. in Latin American studies from The University of Texas at Austin, where she conducted fieldwork and research in the areas of immigration and sexuality. Upon moving to Austin, Candace continued her community involvement at allgo: a statewide queer people of color organization where she began her role as a member of the Fundraising Committee and later became Director of Community Organizing. Additionally she has years of experience in mentoring youth through various programs including the Institute for Community, University and School Partnerships (ICUSP). She is also a creative writer and ensemble member of The Austin Project, a writing and performance project that encourages women of color, activists, artists and scholars to use art as a means of social and political change.

Gregorio Casar, Business Liaison
Gregorio “Goyo” Casar, a native of Houston, received his B.A. in political and social thought from the University of Virginia. After working in the Charlottesville, Virginia school system, he became interested in how responsible business practices could positively impact the educations of at-risk youth and create opportunities for their communities. He later founded the Progressive Action Network, a coalition of seven Charlottesville, Virginia based advocacy and social justice organizations. Also, he was the head organizer for the ongoing Living Wage Campaign at U.Va. He also has worked in Houston and Virginia with ex-offenders and juvenile delinquents searching for educational and employment opportunities. He believes that community-business partnerships have the potential for ensuring both the economic growth and the community health of our cities.

Sergio A. Aguillón-Mata, VISTA Intern
Sergio is a Mexican award-winning essayist and fiction author. He studied literature at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas, The College of Mexico and the University of Potsdam, in Germany. He released the fiction book “Who writes (Landscaper)” in 2004 and publishes sporadically both fiction and essays in several Mexican magazines and websites. While developing his academic career, he acknowledged the strong need for organized action in all the communities and countries he visited, in order to achieve social justice. Once he found himself established in the United States, Sergio started volunteering as an editor at WLCentral.org, a group of independent journalists, and became a collective member at the radical Austin bookstore MonkeyWrench Books. Soon enough, he found and joined Workers Defense Project and AmeriCorps, convinced of being able to bring some help to the specific group of low income workers in Austin but, at the same time, aware of the major benefits the community offers to him in terms of cultural identity and life experience. Sergio admires the perfect balance between hard work and friendship that WDP pursues everyday, gaining from his duties precisely the non-stop learning process, the social action and the pleasure and fun he needed.