Cristina Jiménez Moreta
Distinguished Lecturer, The Colin Powell School
C?o-Chair, Leadership for Democracy and Social Justice
Cristina Jiménez Moreta is a community organizer, strategist, and freedom fighter. She is the Executive Director & Co-founder of United We Dream (UWD), the largest immigrant youth-led network in the country. Under Cristina’s leadership, UWD has grown to a powerful network of over 100 groups, 800,000 members, and a reach of 5.5 million people per month.
Jiménez Moreta immigrated to Queens, New York from Ecuador with her family at the age of 13 seeking a better life. Cristina lived undocumented for 12 years, attending high school and college as an undocumented student. She has been organizing in immigrant communities for over a decade and was part of UWD’s campaign team that led to the historic victory of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in 2012 that protected close to a million young immigrants from deportation.
For her work as a social justice organizer Jiménez Moreta was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME Magazine, and was awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2017. Cristina currently serves on the board of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the Hazen Foundation, Make the Road New York Action and the Dream.US.
R?ick and Susan Goings Conversations in Leadership
T?he Rick and Susan Goings Conversations in Leadership are marque public discussions with individuals who have taken unconventional paths to success at the highest levels of their professions. We probe deeply into the careers of those whose leadership has made a difference and who have persevered despite the odds. Through this series, we will develop an understanding of the styles and critical elements of leadership.
