Guillermo Quinteros, NLA’s newest board member
Community work is in Guillermo Quinteros’s DNA.
“I already grew up in a family that was politicized in the 60s in South America. My dad is from Peru, and my mom is from Puerto Rico. I grew up in Peru, and we had to leave because of political reasons—there was a military coup, so we had to leave,” he recounts.
After leaving Peru as a child, Guillermo’s family found the borders of the United States closed to them, so they settled in Mexico where he spent his adolescence—first in the state of Guerrero before going to high school in Mexico City. Afterwards, his family were finally able to move to Puerto Rico, where his mom is from. He studied economics at Universidad de Puerto Rico before moving to Long Island, NY to pursue graduate studies in History at Stony Brook University.
Describing how his education shaped his identity and movement practice, Guillermo explained, “I studied economics because I came from parents of the 60s, so obviously understanding the political economy was the key to understanding everything. And then I went to Stony Brook to study history, and that was about my own search to understand where I was coming from.”
After finishing his degree in history, Guillermo rounded out his education with a Master of City Planning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology: “That was more about the role of government and how we bring about improvements in people’s lives. And that was my path — from resistance to how we think about the role of the state in transforming society.”
The trajectory inspired Guillermo to take on community organizing. As the director of organizing and then the executive director at Chelsea’s Commision on Hispanic Affairs, he became interested in a more upstream approach to civic engagement once he realized how limited nonprofit structures and organizing can be in the United States. Organizing community members for basic needs is vital, he says, but there’s more power in educating them on how they can change the rules of the game to make sure their voices are heard.
This realization took root in him while he worked with a key community engagement tactic: door knocking. He says, “Someone asked, ‘Who do you think we should vote for?’ And I had to say, ‘Sorry we are a [501](c)(3), we can’t tell you that,’ and they were like ‘What is that?!’ It was so clear to me that there was something about the tool that was not working.”
He put this wisdom to work once he landed at the Solidago Foundation, which had a (c)(4) fund. Over the next 14 years, he would serve as a program officer, program director, and interim co-director, gaining experience in multi-entity work at every level.
Since leaving the Foundation several years ago, Guillermo has played a key role in infrastructure building for progressive movements, including as director of the Independent Resource Generation Hub at Amalgamated Foundation, and most recently, executive director at Jobin-Leeds Partnership for Democracy & Education. This range and depth of experience makes Guillermo a powerful ambassador for the benefits of multi-entity organizations like the groups NLA works with.
“As organizations are developing more of what NLA calls multi-entity organizations, it is key to figure out how to support that work. How do they all work together? How do different elements really help move a community agenda?” he says. “It’s a unique vision and role that NLA has been playing. Plus, I just love the spirit of the organization.”
