The Sacramento Bee’s Latino Change Makers: Meet the Top 20 pioneers transforming the community

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The Sacramento Bee’s Latino Change Makers: Meet the Top 20 pioneers transforming the community

Equity-focused leadership and community building define this cohort of Top 20 Latino Change Makers.

From tackling disparities among farmworkers to empowering the next generation of artists and entrepreneurs, this group is transforming Sacramento and its neighboring communities.Among these trailblazers are health advocates, business owners and elected officials.

The Sacramento Bee’s https://www.sacbee.com/news/equity-lab/, in partnership with the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program, honors these exceptional individuals in the third iteration of the Change Maker series.These pioneers exemplify what’s possible when passion meets purpose.

The Change Makers project celebrates the best of the region’s Latino, Black and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.This cohort of Latino leaders represents the second in a series of three, following our AAPI honorees.We will announce our Top 20 Black Change Makers this winter.

Since the Change Makers project’s inception in 2022, we have honored 175 individuals from all walks of life.

We’ll honor the latest round of change makers, bringing together the 60 leaders, at an event at Sacramento State’s University Ballroom on April 4.Tickets can be purchased here.

The selection committee — made up of past Change Makers, members of the Nehemiah Community Foundation and The Bee — convened in November to consider the community’s nominations and narrow the list down to 20.

Our selection committee included: Lisa Cardoza, president of American River College; Juan Novello, vice president of Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce; Anya Woods, program manager at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District; Scott Syphax, founder and board chair of the Nehemiah Emerging Leaders Program; Scot Siden, chief operating officer of the Nehemiah Community Foundation; Deneva Shelton, chief executive officer of the Nehemiah Community Foundation; Mathew Miranda, The Sacramento Bee’s Latino communities reporter; Sabrina Bodon, editor of The Sacramento Bee’s Equity Lab; and Colleen McCain Nelson, executive editor of The Sacramento Bee.

Now, join us in celebrating the Top 20 Latino Change Makers.

Mirtha Villarreal-Younger

President/CEO, Agile Construction

The eldest daughter with four younger brothers, Mirtha Villarreal-Younger became accustomed to a predominantly male environment long before enlisting in the U.S.Army in the mid-1980s.

Her military career spanned across Europe, the Middle East and the U.S.Villarreal-Younger was among the first women to go through nuclear biological chemical warfare specialist training at Fort McClellan in Alabama during the Cold War.

But when the Gulf War broke out, and her unit was mobilized, she couldn’t go with them.

“Even some six years, seven years after the trickling of women in, that career field was still so small that they could not visualize us in the battlefield and the front lines,” she said.

By the next conflict more than a decade later, she’d deploy to Afghanistan — the only woman in her unit sent to train the Afghan National Army.

Villarreal-Younger federally retired in 2008 as a major then gained the rank of colonel while at the California State Guard.

She continued serving veteran and military personnel in roles with the California Department of Veterans Affairs and Center for Post Traumatic Growth.

She and her husband, fellow combat veteran Martin Younger, now lead the Arden Arcade-based Agile Construction.The company competes for state and federal construction contracts and, often, Villarreal seeks out other veteran-, women- and minority-owned companies to work alongside Agile Construction.

“For me, an important aspect is to always ensure that we reach out to extremely qualified companies that might otherwise not have heard of the opportunity or had access to the opportunity,” Villarreal, 56, said.

Villarreal, a doctoral student in organizational change at the University of Southern California, is acutely aware of the perception of fellow veterans.

She believes media depictions often oversimplify the experiences of the armed forces.

“What you tend to see depicted is either Captain America or the homeless person on the street, and in between there, we exist a full spectrum,” she said.

And in that range, she knows she fits, “Don’t think because you see the lacrosse mom out there, don’t think she might not be the combat veteran.Because I am.”

Michael Vargas

Partner, Rimon Law

In 2023, when political activists demanded a ban on certain books written by LGBTQ+ authors and writers of colors, Michael Vargas took a stand.

He worked with the Elk Grove Unified School District and school administrators to create new instructional material that gave librarians and teachers more jurisdiction over book selection.It also offered transparency to parents on what literature their children have available to read.

Now, as president of the EGUSD Board of Education, he prioritizes ensuring that all students feel accepted and safe, a feeling he wasn’t always afforded.

He often felt isolated as a LGBTQ+ kid attending a conservative high school.As he grew older, he made it his goal to make sure no one felt the same way he did.This led him to law school at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and later to the University of Minnesota, where he finished his degree.

“I just wanted to focus and enjoy the kind of peace and quiet of reading law,” Vargas said.

But when Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, Vargas knew he wanted to get involved in politics.As a Mexican American and a LGBTQ+ man, the results hit him hard.

“It motivated me to say I need to get more involved, because stuff like this can’t happen,” Vargas said.

His political activism would begin in places such as San Mateo, Santa Clara and would later direct his career to Sacramento.

“In order to create that community, to build friendship, to know our neighbors, we need to make sure that we’re in a place that is safe for us,” Vargas said.

Vargas has become a well-known problem solver in his industry.

He was recognized on the American Bar Association’s 2022 On the Rise: Top 40 Young Lawyers List.And in 2020, he was included among the LGBTQ+ Bar Association’s Best LGBTQ+ Attorneys Under the age of 40.

Karina Talamantes

Vice Mayor, Sacramento City Council

Sacramento City Councilmember Karina Talamantes has no problem telling you that she was a WIC baby and a Head Start preschooler or that federal grants helped to fund the nonprofit that allowed her parents to become homeowners.

No one could have known that Talamantes, who turns 36 Sunday, would have what it took to become an elected leader in California’s capital, voting on issues that affect more than half a million people.

Yet, she said, leaders from generations past put in place a framework that ensured she would get the right nutrition through the Women, Infants and Children program, that her brain would get the early stimulation it needed for future academic success and that her working-class parents could put in sweat equity to get an affordable home through the Community Housing Improvement Program.

Talamantes now represents 67,000-plus residents in Natomas, Gardenland and Northgate, she said, but she’s cognizant that her vote will affect all of the city’s residents and takes that into account as she’s considering each decision.

Since her election in 2022, Talamantes has helped court Costco and Top Golf to locate facilities in District 3.But her proudest moment as a public servant came during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when she was working as chief of staff for former Councilmember Angelique Ashby.

“When the vaccination became available and county health gave us the blessing, Natomas Unified School District and our office and the city, we set up a clinic in like four days or three days,” Talamantes said.“We had to figure out how to sign people up and make sure that people who most needed it and didn’t have access to technology could do it.

We set up a hotline.

We vaccinated more than 30,000 people.”

Talamantes also has experience in the business world, helping to run two small family-owned businesses and working as a corporate recruiter for two staffing agencies.Before working in city government, she served four years on the board of trustees for the Sacramento County Office of Education.

Armando Salud-Ambriz

Deputy of Elections, Yolo County

Armando Salud-Ambriz grew up in the small Colusa County town of Arbuckle shielded in a protective “bubble” of family, friends and a close-knit community.But at times he wondered whether a career would be available to him as an immigrant.

“There’s this mentality, there’s a status placed upon you.

You should restrict yourself,” Salud-Ambriz said.“And I think I’m the perfect example of why you shouldn’t be scared to chase your dreams, because there’s so many opportunities.”

Salud-Ambriz, 34, has since earned a college degree, launched a career at the Yolo County Elections Office and been elected to the Yolo County Board of Education.

He also participated in Creciente Latinx Leadership at the Youth Development Network in Sacramento, a program focused on preparing and empowering the next generation of Latinx leaders to influence business and civic policy decisions.

“Have faith in your hope, because your hope creates this want.And with a want, you continue to chase,” he said.“And that chase will eventually get you to either your partial dreams, your first stop dream or your ultimate dreams.And just never give up.”

He was born in Michoacán, Mexico, and his family immigrated to the U.S.when he was around 8 months old.

Salud-Ambriz graduated from Pierce High School in Colusa County and started attending Sacramento State in 2008.

While still in college, he got a job at the California Secretary of State’s Office as an elections assistant.The job “was all new” to him after growing up as an immigrant.

“Voting, elections, that was never a topic of conversation,” he said.“I took the job because I needed money as a poor college student.”

He found election work fascinating and rewarding as someone who had obtained U.S.legal resident status and was seeking citizenship, which he achieved in December 2015.He worked every job available to him, including answering calls from voters seeking help.

“I’m taking calls from voters speaking Spanish: ‘Mijo, can you help me?’” he remembered.

“It’s humbling when they’re like: ‘Thank you.

Now, I can exercise my vote because you explained it to me in Spanish.’”

Monica Ruelas Mares

Manager of Local Children’s Policy, Youth Forward

Monica Ruelas Mares left Sacramento in 2013 for college and didn’t expect to return.Her time away, though, made her realize what a difference she could make in her hometown.

“If my community back home is the same as when I left it, I wouldn’t necessarily feel that I’m doing my job as a person in this world,” said Ruelas Mares, 29.

Ruelas Mares grew up navigating a mix of cultures in south Sacramento.On weekdays, she and her friends immersed themselves in early 2000s hip-hop.She spent weekends with her immigrant parents, listening to Vicente Fernández and Jenni Rivera.

“I always felt like I was in the middle (of cultures),” she said.

Ruelas Mares attended UCLA, where she earned a degree in geography and became interested in policy change through community partnerships.

After college, she returned to Sacramento to work with the Latino Coalition for a Healthy California, where she empowered farmworker women in Los Angeles and the Central Valley to advocate for community improvements.

In late 2020, she joined Youth Forward and quickly became a key player in its mission to support Sacramento’s vulnerable children.Ruelas Mares has since become the organization’s manager of local children’s policy and serves as the coordinator of the Sac Kids First Coalition, where she advocates for investments in services for youth and children.

Her work led to the passage in 2022 of Measure L, which allocates a portion of the city’s cannabis tax revenue to fund child and youth services.

Last year, she was appointed to the Children’s Fund Planning and Oversight Commission, where she was voted the chair and led the development of a five-year strategic plan.The plan includes landmark initiatives such as a basic income program for foster youth aging out of the system.

Looking ahead, Ruelas Mares remains committed to serving Sacramento regardless of the role.

“Whether I’m in a different industry or the same industry, one thing that is going to be important to me is to continue giving back to my community,” Ruelas Mares said.

Marco Rodriguez

Financial Advisor, The Principal Financial Group

Marco Rodriguez has spent his adulthood ensuring others have opportunities to access education and the attainment of financial stability.

Rodriguez grew up in the rural village of El Refugio in Mexico.

At 19, he immigrated to Texas, but soon moved to Sacramento.He spent his late teens and early 20s couch surfing.

He met an Educational Opportunity Program counselor who helped him enroll at Sacramento State, where his finance journey began.

“I knew what it was not to have money and go to college,” said Rodriguez.

In college, Rodriguez learned English little by little and soon became a student assistant at the California Department of Transportation in the accounting department.Working part time allowed him to go to college and rent an apartment with three friends.

These experiences inform his current work as a financial advisor at The Principal Financial Group in Elk Grove.

As chairman of the Mexican Cultural Center, Rodriguez has been part of efforts to raise more than $1.6 million in scholarships for hundreds of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, students.

“I’ve always felt you did the right thing, and good things will happen,” Rodriguez said.“There’s no guarantees in life, you know, as you see now, I’m in a wheelchair, so something bad must have happened in my life.”

A car crash in the late ‘90s left Rodriguez without the ability to use his lower body.Rodriguez has been appointed to the California State Independent Living Council, and in 2005 then-President George W.

Bush appointed him to the National Council on Disability.

“I’m a person in a wheelchair, but I’ve been exposed to people that are much more incredible than me,” he said.

Rodriguez sits on the board of directors of Pride Industries, a Roseville-based nonprofit organization that connects people with disabilities with employment; he also holds positions with the American Leadership Forum and Cien Amigos.

“I want other people with disabilities to be inspired to say, ‘Hey, I could do that,’” he said.

Dalia Ramirez-Robles

Co-founder, Corremos Sacramento

Dalia Ramirez-Robles always knew poverty shaped her upbringing, but she didn’t realize how deeply it defined her access to nature until moving to south Sacramento.

There, she often found herself driving to more affluent neighborhoods such as Fair Oaks and Land Park just to enjoy a run or walk her dogs.

“I didn’t know that there were people that lived in safer neighborhoods, that lived in prettier neighborhoods, that had access to nice parks,” Ramirez-Robles, 31, said.“That’s when the light bulb went off.”

Ramirez-Robles has since entrenched herself in Sacramento, trying to ensure green spaces are accessible to all communities and creating a group to celebrate diversity in wellness.She proudly refers to herself as an “active transportation enthusiast.”

She was raised in the Central Valley by a single mother.After graduating from high school, Ramirez-Robles spent years bouncing from job to job in retail, restaurants and catering.

In late 2020, she moved to Sacramento hoping for a fresh start.She found it through running, often exploring the city’s empty streets during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was like a cool way for me to get acquainted with the city,” Ramirez-Robles said.“Nobody was outside.”

Soon after, she co-founded Corremos Sacramento — a Latino-centered walking and running club.Now, nearly every Monday, Ramirez-Robles co-leads the group, which is rooted in cultural diversity, empowering a wide range of wellness activities and community building.

“We’re definitely more than a running group,” Ramirez-Robles said.

“We’re Latinos, supporting one another.”

Ramirez-Robles has since joined the Sacramento Transportation Management Association as an outreach coordinator.In the role, she guides and supports residents interested in transitioning to more sustainable commuting options.

She aspires to a long career in urban planning in which she can transform cities into spaces for everyone to thrive.

“I’m just an advocate for people to be able to walk, run, bike, commute — equitably, safely and sustainably,” Ramirez-Robles said.

Guillermina ‘Mina’ Perez

President, Vida de Oro Foundation

Guillermina Perez’s resolve to create opportunities for the North Sacramento community is fueled by years of struggles to nurture her artistic ambitions.

“I know what it feels like to be rejected and not be recognized,” Perez, 68, said.“I was there, and so now I’m representing that underdog.”

Born in Texas, Perez’s first challenge came when she was afflicted with polio as a baby.She spent several years learning to adjust to her disability and endured teasing from other children.

At 8, Perez moved to Del Paso Heights and endured a childhood of poverty.

She found solace in art and gained the attention of her teachers.But Perez’s passion was soon dismissed by her father, who told her that such a career wouldn’t amount to a reliable future.

“When he did that, I was so hurt and scared that I stopped,” Perez said.

Perez wouldn’t pursue her dreams fully until nearly three decades later, after years of working at libraries and state agencies.At 38, with the encouragement of her husband, Perez started a side business called “Mina’s Treasures,” where she sold handcrafted paintings, jewelry and trinkets.

Her experiences highlighted the lack of support for artists in North Sacramento.In 2008, she founded the Vida de Oro Foundation — a nonprofit organization that promotes the arts and provides supplies to the community.The goal was to open doors for artists, like herself, who don’t come from traditional or well-resourced backgrounds.

Through the group, Perez has hosted art shows, poetry readings, film screenings and the annual Sacramento Taco Festival.Each year, she also organizes events that offer free clothing, including hundreds of prom dresses for high school students.

In 2024, Perez became the first Latina to serve as the vice president of the North Sacramento Chamber of Commerce.

The role is yet another opportunity for her to connect her cherished community with support.

“I’m here until the end,” Perez said.“You never leave a place you love.”

Lisandro ’Chando’ Madrigal

Founder, Chando’s Tacos

Long before Lisandro Madrigal was a successful Mexican restaurant owner, he was a young boy who enjoyed picking cherries in the fields and delivering tortillas to taco stands.

Back then, he was one of eight children helping his migrant farmworker parents chase the American Dream.The family — from Michoacán, Mexico — followed the crops from California to Oregon, Washington and Montana.During the off-season, they returned to their home country and ran a tortilla business.

“We came from a hard-working family with a dream and a passion to accomplish something here in the United States,” Madrigal said.

Madrigal moved to Tijuana at 16 to help his father with the business.

Here, he worked directly with taco shops and became passionate about the food industry.

He returned to the U.S.at 20, hoping to provide a better life for his soon-to-be-born child.

His next few years were split between harvesting cherries and working as an Apple salesperson.

But in 2007, the death of Madrigal’s father caused him to re-evaluate his career and priorities.He became committed to bringing Tijuana-style food to Sacramento.

“I wasn’t happy with the type of food around Sacramento at the time,” Madrigal said.“It was more like Tex-Mex.There were good restaurants but nothing like Tijuana-style street food, and that’s what I wanted to show.”

He started by catering in people’s backyards and testing his recipes at Apple company potlucks.Within three years, Madrigal built a big enough clientele to open the first Chando’s Tacos on Arden Way.

The business has since expanded to eight locations spanning from Citrus Heights to West Sacramento and employing about 100 workers, many of whom are Latino and primarily Spanish-speaking.

Madrigal’s commitment to his workforce was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic when he and his wife gave up their salaries to keep more workers employed.He views them and his family as the true reason for his success.

“I’ve got some troupers,” Madrigal said.

“I’ve got some soldiers that work for me.They’re proud of the company they work for and, for me, that’s really important.”

Kendra Macias Reed

Director, Franklin Neighborhood Development District

Kendra Macias Reed’s passion for tackling Sacramento’s urban issues can be traced back to her childhood, attending protests alongside her mother.

“The message I got was that you have to be the change you want to see,” Macias Reed, 39, said.

Born in the Central Valley, she moved to Davis at 8.

Macias Reed, a third-generation Latina, was raised by a single mother who managed a small retail business and emphasized the importance of activism.They routinely headed to the Capitol to rally against anti-immigrant measures and unfair labor practices.

The early exposure to advocacy led Macias Reed to study urban planning at the University of Washington, where she learned about how socioeconomic forces of cities and neighborhoods affect people’s lives.She returned to Sacramento after graduating from college.

In 2014, she secured a job at the Capitol Area Development Authority and gained first-hand experience in urban development.Macias Reed co-operated a construction company with her husband and built a reputation for involvement in neighborhood associations.

In 2019, she was appointed to the Sacramento Planning and Design Commission.She has served on the commission since then, contributing to the city’s new General Plan and its first-in-the-nation housing policies.

Much of Macias Reed’s recent work has centered on revitalizing Franklin Boulevard, a historically immigrant and predominantly Latino corridor.As director of Franklin Neighborhood Development District, she has pushed for “overdue investment,” overseen community events and programs and secured millions of dollars in grants.

“I see myself as an advocate of trying to get the dollars that I feel like we deserve,” Macias Reed said.

Macias Reed also serves on the board of directors for Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento, a nonprofit housing organization.She remains committed to a career in public service — one rooted in making a tangible change for her community.

“That was the message that my mom always showed me,” she said.

Julio Lamas

Farmworker and Rural Housing Administrator, California Department of Housing and Community Development

Julio Lamas discovered that his maternal grandfather once lived at one of the migrant farmworker communities that Lamas now oversees.

It was one of several full-circle moments Lamas has had since he took a detour into a career in affordable housing after taking a housing policy class as a senior at UC Davis.Before that, he was on track to become a high school counselor.

“I grew up in a mobile home park,” he said.

“It wasn’t until I went to college that I started to realize some of the challenges, kind of systemically, that led folks to live in some of these communities, and I also realized deficiencies with providing proper infrastructure and proper lighting and safety and health conditions.”

Lamas, who also serves on the Sacramento Planning and Design Commission, said his family had to move out of the mobile home park when he was a teenager because the owner sold the property to a developer.They moved to Sacramento where he finished his senior year at Natomas High School, and his parents purchased a home in the Gardenland area.

Now 37, Lamas oversees farmworker housing for the state, including upkeep of properties the state owns and bringing online new projects by nonprofit and commercial developers.More than 7,000 farmworkers depend on the state’s 1,885 affordable housing units during the peak harvest season, said Monica M.

Jimenez, an attorney who used to work with Lamas at the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

Lamas also teamed with other state agencies and stakeholder groups to procure more than $40 million for migrant center improvements, Jimenez said.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Jimenez said, Lamas also worked with several state agencies to establish permanent, secure broadband access at far-flung migrant centers, crucial infrastructure that also is benefiting nearby rural communities.

The need for this improved online access became evident during the stay-home order when children at the migrant centers needed to connect to e-classrooms, Lamas said.Migrant center administrators arranged for specially equipped vans to establish hotspots, he said, but those signals weren’t always reliable.

Today, 18 of 24 centers now have permanent connections, Lamas said, and the remaining sites should have broadband by early 2025.This means that all migrant families will have access, allowing them to connect with relatives in their homeland, take online classes and access tele-health services.

Marcus Gomez

CEO, California Clothing Recyclers

Marcus Gomez’s father helped to found the Sacramento Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, so perhaps it’s fitting that Gomez steered the organization as board chairman alongside CEO Alice Perez through a difficult fundraising challenge.

Perez decided to return to the corporate world in 2014 and Gomez and his fellow directors tapped the organization’s marketing director, Cathy Rodriguez Aguirre, to lead the chamber hoping she would choose to stay for a while.

“The most successful chambers are chambers that have long-term CEOs,” Gomez said.

His faith in Rodriguez Aguirre has paid off: She was named “Chamber Executive of the Year” in 2021.

Long before Gomez led the Hispanic chamber’s turnaround, he and his wife, Crystal, founded a small business that recycled cast-off clothing.Gomez had worked for his father Lorenzo Gomez in the same sort of business, and when he decided to strike out on his own, the elder Gomez had given him a tidy severance and his blessing.

Today, 28 years later, Gomez’s California Clothing Recyclers has survived in a niche business segment in which larger players have failed as margins have only grown thinner.

Over the years, he’s purchased forklifts, trucks, trailers and his own warehouse.

Chamber membership allowed Gomez, 69, to build relationships with experts he could trust as sounding boards, he said, when he went into business.

When he was considering buying the warehouse where his business operates in 2006, he asked financing guru Jesus Fernandez to review his books and determine whether he could qualify for a small business loan to buy his warehouse.Gomez said he and his wife will one day sell that building to help fund their retirements.

Now vice chairman of the California Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Gomez has played a role in representing the interests of small business owners with state and national leaders, and he chairs the board of Ronald McDonald House Charities Northern California.

Vicky Fernandez

Former Councilmember, Woodland City Council

Following the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Vicky Fernandez felt a desire to become more involved in politics.She wanted to make sure the voices of people in underserved communities were at the forefront.

“I think I waited for the last day to file,” Fernandez said.“I put my head in the race with the hope that I could serve my community in that capacity.”

She served on the Woodland City Council up until December, representing District 4, which includes the northern and eastern parts of the city.

In her role, she supported education-related initiatives, including the Promise Program, which encourages Woodland High School graduates to go to Woodland Community College.

A retired teacher, Fernandez got her start at Sacramento State, where she helped the children of farmworkers with the California Mini Corps programs in the 1980s.In 1987, she served as a bilingual first grade teacher at Maxwell Elementary School.She would then move to Gibson Elementary School, where she would help students in a variety of roles for 22 years.

To Fernandez, education is an opportunity — a way to open the doors that were once sealed shut by society.

“Education is a great equalizer that gives people an opportunity,” Fernandez said.

Over the years, Fernandez has been honored for her achievements in education.She was awarded the Yolo County Mexican American Concilio’s Educator of the Year award in 2016.A year later, she was a keynote speaker for the Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network.

She was also inducted into the Youth on the Move, Inc.International Educators’ Hall of Fame in 2023.

Fernandez has been described as a leader who is “deeply invested in the well-being of the Woodland community” by her colleague, Angel Barajas, the former mayor of Woodland.

“Vicky has been a dedicated advocate for the children and families of Woodland for nearly 40 years,” Barajas said.

Pablo Espinoza

Deputy Director of Communications, California Department of Housing and Community Development

It’s not Pablo Espinoza’s work as an award-winning journalist that distinguishes him.Nor is it his involvement in local organizations that promote culture, or his decades of public service working for the state.It’s his role as a father, he said, that defines him.

“Normally, people talk about the lessons that we teach our children,” Espinoza said.But for Espinoza, 55, he’s learning from his sons.

He was initially drawn to the truth-telling element of journalism, but his sons inspired his passion for telling stories.His eldest son, Adrián, would often accompany Espinoza when he worked as an investigative reporter for Univision.Adrián would help as a video producer when they went into the field together.

Since he traveled to the U.S.

from his home country of Ecuador, first as an exchange student and then as a young journalist, he’s been drawn to public service, something his parents instilled in him from a young age.

As a reporter in Texas and California, Espinoza covered everything from weather forecasts to exposing immigration consultants’ predatory practice of stealing money from people seeking legal advice.The latter earned Espinoza one of his twoEmmys.

Roughly two decades ago, Espinoza shifted from journalism.He officially became a public servant working with former Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez in the Speaker’s Office of Member Services.There, Espinoza ushered in new communication strategies and modern technologies that improved government transparency.

Now, as the deputy director of communications for the California Department of Housing and Community Development, he used his storytelling talent to build support for the administration’s housing priorities.

He was reminded just how much his family shaped his values last year when Adrián unexpectedly passed away.

In the months since, Espinoza has reflected on the lessons his son taught him.Those can best be summed up by Espinoza’s simple adage: “Just try to be kind and generous with each other.”

And for those grappling with the inhumane burden of losing someone, he offers his insights.

“The only reason grief exists,” Espinoza had learned, “is because love happened first.”

Veronica Delgado Rodriguez

Marketing Specialist, Sacramento Municipal Utility District

Friends and colleagues call Veronica Delgado Rodriguez a “forever volunteer.”

It’s a trait the Sacramento marketing professional learned as a child from parents who knew the value of giving back and paying it forward.

“There’s always a job but not always a paycheck.That’s how I was brought up,” Rodriguez, 40, said.“My parents were always volunteering for something.Dad volunteered to do the bingo calling.

Mom volunteered with our church.People gave me the space to (volunteer) and gave me the chance to do it.”

Rodriguez, a marketing specialist at Sacramento Municipal Utility District, is also a board member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce Foundation, whose Acesso Sacramento program provides grants to Northgate Boulevard’s small businesses.

Rodriguez’s Chamber work is one of the avenues she’s taken to help her community and greater Sacramento, from the Sacramento Arts Commission, to the mayor’s office reviewing grants to boost the city’s creative economy, to Sacramento State, where she organized and led a mentoring network for Latina professionals on campus.

At SMUD, she focuses on the Sacramento region’s diverse communities served by the utility, including the multilingual grassroots marketing of its recent Connecting our Communities Resource Expo.

In her role, Rodriguez “saw the need to connect with diverse communities in new and innovative ways, and did it,” said nominator and Sacramento attorney Justin Ward, a 2023 Change Maker.“She sees opportunities in problems and solves them.”

While her parents inspired the instinct to volunteer early on, she considers the

Sacramento celebration of Latino community and culture, Festival de la Familia, an early rite of passage, working in her early 20s with artists’ exhibits and festival volunteers.

“Any Latinos over 40, they know the Festival de la Familia.It was the biggest opportunity to learn, to grow and to mess up,” Rodriguez said.“I got a lot of grace from people — a lot of flak, too.”

Antonio De Loera-Brust

Director of Communications, United Farm Workers

As a teenager, Antonio De Loera-Brust began using both his education and his knowledge of U.S.socio-political systems to try to level the playing field for migrant farmworkers.

While in high school, he volunteered to mentor and tutor students at the Madison Migrant Farm Labor Center in western Yolo County.As a college student at Loyola Marymount University, he was hired over his summer breaks to run the Madison camp’s afterschool program.

One day, De Loera-Brust said, one of the boys in the program, “a really sweet kid,” was taking swings at everyone.

After pulling the boy aside, De Loera-Brust learned he was stressed and scared because his mother had been diagnosed with cancer and her Medi-Cal coverage had lapsed.The forms to extend coverage had been sent to an old address.

Fortunately, De Loera-Brust said, the director of his youth theater company worked for then-Yolo County Supervisor Don Saylor.

De Loera-Brust brought the family’s concern to her.She and Saylor helped the family move past barriers they were encountering to restore their coverage.

It was a heady moment.

He later worked for powerbrokers such as Congressman Joaquin Castro of San Antonio, presidential candidates Julián Castro and Sen.Elizabeth Warren, and U.S.Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and that small victory for a farmworker’s family grounded De Loera-Brust.

“What do the folks in Yolo County have to show for this?” he would ask himself.“Are the migrant kids at the Madison migrant camp or the Davis migrant camp better off because you’re in the room?”

The question inspired him as he worked with candidates and government leaders on crafting policy positions, including elements of Warren’s plan for a rules-based, fair and welcoming immigration system.

De Loera-Brust’s work caught the attention of the United Farm Workers, and the union’s leaders recruited him to become director of communications.

Yolo County Supervisor Angel Barajas, who nominated 29-year-old De Loera-Brust for the Change Maker award, lauded his work to ensure farmworkers received COVID-19 vaccinations during the pandemic and his dogged work to hold contractors and farmers accountable for denying shade or breaks during periods of excessive heat.

“His leadership, combined with his deep personal connection to the farmworker cause, sets him apart from his peers,” Barajas said.

Regina Cuellar

Chairwoman, Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians

Regina Cuellar stands on the shoulders of her ancestors — the ones who survived the California genocide of Native American tribes.

“I think about that, their resiliency,” Cuellar said.“The reason why I’m here is because of them.”

Cuellar has been in leadership positions with the Shingle Spring Band of Miwok Indians for 11 years.She currently serves as chairwoman, a position she’s held for seven years.

Growing up in Visalia, Cuellar had a multicultural upbringing, a result of being Miwok, Nisenan, Filipina and Mexican.

“Growing up, I had a pot of pinto beans always on the stove with a pot of rice,” Cuellar said.

“It was always a great mixture of my cultures.”

While El Dorado County is the tribe’s home base, Sacramento is the homeland of her ancestors.She chose to move to the region to reinvest in her community.

Cuellar became a single mother at 19.

And while supporting her child, she maneuvered through careers, trying to get equal opportunities in male-dominated fields within the tribe’s Indian Health clinic.

Her job in the tribe’s Health and Wellness Center would eventually help her work up the ladder in her tribal community.She later ran for tribal council and won her election.

Throughout her tenure, Cuellar has doubled the tribe’s land base, creating housing for tribal members.

The creation of the tribe’s Red Hawk Resort and Casino has also aided in her community’s economic progress.And she led the effort to re-acquire land for her tribe that once belonged to her ancestors.These properties are in the Verona Marina, at 2700 J St.and at 301 Capitol Mall.

Cuellar’s leadership has made a difference in California Indian Country.She was a part of the creation of the Feather Alert, California’s emergency notification system for missing Indigenous people.She also serves on the California Commission on the State of Hate, where she advises on legislation focused on protecting civil rights.

Manuel Buenrostro

Director of Policy, Californians Together

Manuel Buenrostro’s passion for helping people inspired him to pursue education.And now, it motivates him to advocate for the educational equity and rights of English learners through policy.

“I’m privileged in that everything that I get to advocate for and everything that I get to work on are things that I believe and things that are mission aligned to me,” Buenrostro, 40, said.

Buenrostro is the proud son of Mexican immigrants, native to a small town near Guadalajara.

His background has driven his passion toward helping English and multilingual learners in California.

His career in education jumped from elementary school to middle school, always with an emphasis on supporting English learners.

While starting his career in policy, his passions took him to volunteer for Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign while living in Virginia, then to a White House internship in 2009.

Buenrostro’s more recent work addressed educational inequities and issues underserved students face in Sacramento.While with the California School Boards Association, Buenrostro focused on improving the quality of education.He taught board members on a Local Control Funding Formula, which calculates how to provide financial resources to multilingual and immigrant students, with a focus on reducing achievement gaps.

For Buenrostro, altruism is a privilege and an obligation.It’s never been a matter of choice for him; it’s felt like a responsibility.

As director of policy for Californians Together, he advocates for more investments in policy focused on helping students.Buenrostro said he feels like he has to do his part to help others and to improve the world bit by bit.

That’s what public service is about, he said.

“(Buenrostro’s) dedication to educational equity and mentorship highlights his deep-rooted commitment to community service, impacting both current and future generations,” said community leader Isaac Gonzalez.

Ana Bolaños

Assistant Deputy Director, California Department of Public Health’s Office of Health Equity

As a young child growing up in San Francisco, Ana Bolaños befriended her elderly neighbors, both to learn from them and to help them when they needed assistance.

She developed her empathetic nature after her family immigrated from Nicaragua to California, and Bolaños immediately recognized how people treated her differently in school as a Latina and non-native English speaker.

Those experiences have shaped how she approaches her work as a public health practitioner.She recognizes her position as an assistant deputy director with the state’s Department of Public Health’s Office of Health Equity lends her authority, but she leads with humility.

Whether she’s in meetings with agency leaders or community members, “I’m the same person, I show up the same way, I don’t know how to be anything different,” Bolaños, 56, said.

Her dedication to public service led Bolaños to pursue a career in social work, specifically to decrease health disparities among Californians.She’s worked to increase health care access to migrant families and sought to reduce barriers to mental health treatment for young Latinos.

Recently, as the project director of the state’s Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, Bolaños worked with her team to increase literacy and decrease stigma around mental health issues facing young people.

Bolaños is acutely aware of how the mental health system fails to meet the needs of communities of color and non-English speakers.To reach the widest possible audience, Bolaños led the distribution of dozens of grants to community organizations across the state that work with populations that have unique mental health needs, such as LGBTQ+ youth and Indigenous communities.

“We do better when we connect with people from our community,” Bolaños said.

“Our culture plays such a deep role in defining how we walk through this earth.”

Bolaños knows that for people to thrive, they need culturally and linguistically relevant behavioral health care.

In doing that work of lowering barriers to health services, Bolaños is planting seeds.She hopes that those seeds will eventually grow roots that support strong, healthy communities across the state.

Veronica Ahumada

Director of Technology and Social Connectedness Laboratory, the University of California Davis’s School of Medicine Center for Health and Technology

As a child, Veronica Ahumada was bound to the couch in her family’s one-bedroom apartment.Congenital heart defects kept her home from school and her brothers would bring home her coursework.

While studying English at Loma Linda University, she read “Tortuga” by Mexican-American author Rudolfo Anaya, which chronicles the lives of children with chronic illnesses.Inspired by the tale, Ahumada entered the medical field.

Today, through her work at the UC Davis Medical Center for Health and Technology, she helps children with the same condition live their lives to the fullest.

Ahumada focuses on the use of social robots and interactive technologies to improve health and developmental outcomes for children.She also heads the National Robotics Initiative, a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation which creates telerobots for children who are restricted to their homes because of their medical conditions or disabilities.

“Ahumada has developed and improved the design of robots and environments to facilitate robot-medical social inclusion and learning,” said coworker Edwin Garcia.“This way, students who are homebound can still be present in the classroom via a computer display attached to a robot that can move around the room.”

Ahumada has spearheaded the Latino Excellence and Achievement Awards at UC Davis to highlight Latino graduate students.

While studying for her PhD at the University of California, Irvine, she said she was the only Mexican American in her cohort.She said opportunities for Latino students aren’t always available, so this award program seeks to highlight talents.

“People want to see us like one way, but we are everything,” Ahumada said.“Just because we’re in the United States, doesn’t mean like, suddenly we’re not scientists, suddenly we’re not doctors, suddenly we’re not anything.Those interests and those talents are still there.”

This story was originally published January 9, 2025 at 5:00 AM.

CORRECTION: This story was updated to reflect that Manuel Buenrostro worked with the California School Boards Association..

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