Roberto De Mata

Roberto De Mata, M.A. serves as the Project Manager for the SpaceTech Scholars Program at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Felix Flores

Felix Flores, Ph.D., serves as an associate professor of the Marketing Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Manuel Del Real

Manuel Del Real, Ph.D., serves as the Executive Director of Hispanic Serving Institution Initiatives and Inclusion at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include HSI/Minority Serving Institutions, diversity, equity & inclusion, Greek-letter organizations, civic engagement, Title V grants, and National Science Foundation grants. His professional focus is centered around culturally responsive pedagogy and curriculum.

Del Real is the assistant vice president of membership for The Alliance of Hispanic Serving Institution Educators. He is also the co-founder of the Colorado HSI Consortium and is the current president of the Colorado Coalition for the Educational Advancement of Latinxs. He has presented at a panel at the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) conference and facilitated the 2021 Sigma Lambda Betas International Fraternity Inc.’s Virtual Leadership Institute.

Before joining MSU Denver, Del Real was an adjunct faculty member in Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University.

Del Real earned his Doctorate in Education with a focus on higher education and social justice from Iowa State University, Master of Arts in higher education with a focus on diversity in organizations and Bachelor of Arts in French, Psychology, and Spanish from the University of Denver.

Anahi Russo Garrido

Anahi Russo Garrido, Ph.D. is an associate professor, department chair and director of the Gender Institute for Teaching and Advocacy (GITA), at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Their research and teaching have focused on transnational sexualities, gender and sexuality in Latin America, queer and feminist theory and social justice organizing.

Russo Garrido is the author of “Tortilleras Negotiating Intimacy: Love, Friendship and Sex in Queer Mexico City,” which investigated the transformation of intimacy in Mexico City in the lives of three generations of women participating in queer spaces. They are also the co-editor of “Building Feminist Movements and Organizations” and has published articles on queer Mexico City in the Journal of Lesbian Studies and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, among other journals. Their new research project focuses on the ways in which some advocates utilize contemplative practices to support racial justice activism. This new project contributes to current discussions on queer and feminist care, queer and trans ecologies and racial justice activism.

They earned a doctorate in Gender and Women’s Studies from Rutgers University, and postdoctoral fellowships at Carleton College and Brandeis University.

Alfredo Sanchez

Alfredo Sanchez, M.S., is an associate professor in the Journalism and Media Production Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Arturo Jimenez

Arturo Jimenez, J.D., is an affiliate professor in the Chicana/o Studies; and Criminal Justice and Criminology Departments at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He teaches a course Chicanos and the Law where students learn about how the legal system and laws relate to individual community rights, cultural conflict and issues concerning ethnicity. Jimenez areas of expertise include immigration, public education, local/national politics and cross-border Latinx issues.

Jimenez has practiced federal immigration law for over 24 years in Colorado as a bilingual attorney and is a founder of the Immigration Clinic at Catholic Charities in Pueblo. He represents immigrant families for Legal Permanent Residence, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, Special Immigrant Juvenile Status, Naturalization, Asylum, Family Petitions, Victim’s Visas and Deportation Defense at the Immigration Law Offices of Arturo Jimenez.

After serving as the President of the Colorado Statewide Parent Coalition from 2000 to 2006, Jimenez was twice elected to the Board of Education for the Denver Public Schools and served from 2007 to 2015.

Jimenez is the author of Dreamers Nightmare: The U.S. War on Immigrant LatinX Children. He earned his bachelor’s in sociology and his juris doctor degree from the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Graham Stefan Ignizio

Lucía E. Briceño

James Mejia

Elizabeth Parmelee

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