Elizabeth Guerra (she/her/ella)
Executive Director & C0-Founder
Elizabeth is a Latina social justice activist from Queens, NY, with over fourteen years of experience building community power through the vehicles of community organizing, volunteer recruitment and engagement, and popular education at non-profits and unions throughout the United States and Puerto Rico. Elizabeth has technical expertise in collective bargaining, multi-layered campaign development, women’s rights, power building, reproductive, economic and worker justice.
Elizabeth graduated with her BS from SUNY Stony Brook University with departmental honors in History and obtained her Masters in Labor Studies from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Elizabeth is also a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-200), Wellness Coach, and Full Spectrum Doula.
Hector “Freedom” Gerardo (he/him)
Programs Director & Co-Founder
Hector Gerardo has dedicated his life to organizing youth and teaching them to stand in their own power. For close to twenty years, Hector has created spaces where the voices of youth are elevated and used to catalyze change. Hector comes from a long line of activists -- his ancestors fought for the rights of working class people and people of African descent in the Dominican Republic for decades – and continues that legacy of activism in the United States.
Having worked with nonprofits and unions throughout the country in several different capacities, Hector has gathered the knowledge necessary to help lead organizations to identify their strength and create lasting change. Hector created numerous multi-generational coalitions that were used successfully to win campaigns, and continued to use said coalitions to advance other political, legislative, and social objectives. Lastly, Hector has a proven record of creating and implementing multi-year strategic plans that have supported the vision of organizations while also ensuring that the plan was tangible and transparent for all.
Dylan Darius Mehri (he/him)
Outreach & Hemp Education Coordinator
Dylan grew up in Washington D.C. and comes to this work as a farmer and educator whose focus is land-based learning and agroecological food & medicine growing and production. Following years of work with social entrepreneurships in Bogotá & Medellín, Colombia, in 2020, Dylan transitioned to grow food to address social, economic, and environmental challenges. While working on farms in the D.C. area, he earned a master’s degree in Urban Agriculture from the University of the District of Columbia in 2022 and then launched Joon Gardens in 2023 to cultivate foods, medicines & community in his family’s home in Newtown, CT. Through Joon Gardens, Dylan has planted dozens of varieties of native fruit & medicinal trees and produced fresh & value added products for the local community. As the Outreach & Hemp Education Coordinator for the Advancing Markets for Producers: Industrial Hemp CT program, Dylan is excited to support farmers introducing industrial hemp as a carbon-negative crop that can invigorate local economies in Connecticut.