Programmatic and Operational Leadership

Laura Pantoja has lived in Santa Ana for over two decades. She is a co-founder for El Centro Cultural de México, an alternative space in Santa Ana where the community can find cultural, educational, and artistic activities that strengthen their identities, nurture their talents, and develop a sense of leadership in their community.

She has worked on grassroots organizing campaigns in Santa Ana to ensure immigrant community voices are at the center of planning and decision-making. Her experience has been in facilitating processes, coalition building, maintenance, strategy, and leadership development, cultivating a base, community outreach, translation, and creating popular education materials. 

She currently works at Latino Health Access (LHA) as the first Promotora Coordinator to lead the Community Engagement and Advocacy Department. She oversees LHA’s Integrated Voter Engagement model and co-designs campaigns with other Promotores and community residents to activate local tenants in housing justice advocacy campaigns and a tenant-led eviction prevention and defense network.

Laura studied Linguistics and Spanish-language Literature at the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla. She is originally from Ciudad de México and has a passion for reading, cooking, coffee, and challenging the system