We are proud to have a Board of Advisors composed of Puerto Rican political leaders, scholars, artists, and professionals who believe in our mission and support our work. Their expertise and perspectives inform our efforts and strengthen our growing movement for Puerto Rico's decolonization and sovereignty.

Jessie Fuentes

Alderperson, Chicago 26th Ward

Jessie Fuentes, a queer Latina grassroots organizer, educator, and public policy advocate. As the Alderperson of the 26th Ward, she brings over a decade of experience in education, criminal justice reform, affordable housing, community development, and sustainability. 

Growing up in Humboldt Park amidst the generational traumas of parental substance use, mental illness, and job instability, Jessie resorted to dealing with her own struggles of resentment and anger with the juvenile justice system, as experienced by far too many young Chicagoans. 

Jessie found a home at Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School, an alternative high school in the heart of Humboldt Park. Jessie was politicized by educators who understood her life experiences. She graduated high school, earned a degree from NEIU, and returned home to Humboldt Park to serve as the Dean of Students of both Roberto Clemente Community Academy and her alma mater, ensuring Black and Latine students had the resources to transcend trauma and pursue their aspirations. As Director of Policy and Youth Advocacy at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, she championed community-driven solutions that address violence, housing affordability, and re-entry for returning citizens.

As the proud Alderperson of the 26th Ward, she has led legislative accomplishments, including sponsoring the resolution for the national fight for parole in place for the 11 million undocumented workers in the United States, the One Fair Wage ordinance to eliminate the sub-minimum wage for tipped workers, and, most recently, the Northwest Side Housing Preservation Ordinance to protect communities from gentrification. She is currently working on developing a city-wide youth Peace Commission through the Peace Book Ordinance and establishing stronger networks of support for unhoused residents.

Mónica Jiménez

Assistant Professor, the University of Texas at Austin

Mónica A. Jiménez is a poet and historian. Her research and writing explore the intersections of law, race, and empire in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her book, Making Never Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico, which offers a legal history of race and exception in the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico, was published in June 2024 by the University of North Carolina Press.

Dr. Jiménez has received fellowships in support of her work from the Institute for Citizens and Scholars (formerly the Woodrow Wilson Foundation), the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Institute for Global Law and Policy at Harvard Law School. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Letras Boricuas Fellow by the Flamboyán Arts Foundation. Her scholarly and creative writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Radical History Review, Poem-a-Day, WSQ: Women Studies Quarterly, Latino Studies, and CENTRO: Journal among others.

Kristian Mercado

Filmmaker

Kristian Mercado Figueroa is an award winning Puerto Rican filmmaker living in Spanish Harlem and the director of Mataron a Pedro, a short film about Puerto Rican nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos.

Raised between New York’s Spanish Harlem and Puerto Rico, Kristian Mercado discovered his passion for the arts at an early age, often using film as a form of escapism. His psychedelic animated short Nuevo Rico debuted at the 2021 SXSW Festival, garnering the prestigious Animation Jury Award.

Mercado directed his first feature film entitled If You Were the Last, written by Angela Bourassa. The film is a warm and comedic investigation of life and love, set on a rocket ship adrift in space.

Mercado has directed content for Billie Eilish, Bad Bunny, Awkwafina, Eric Andre, Spotify, Adidas, Corona, Miller, Topo Chico, Alienware, De La Soul, MF DOOM, Planned Parenthood, Gatorade, and Adult Swim, among others. He has also solidified a place in today’s comedy scene, directing specials for Michael Che, Ilana Glazer, Taylor Tomlinson, Hannibal Buress, Sam Jay, Phoebe Robinson, and Aida Rodriguez.

With work that has screened at numerous festivals, Mercado has a distinct voice for addressing issues of identity, family, and systemic oppression across race and class. His work is celebrated for its poetic portrayal of working-class struggles and highlighting the gaps between love and loss.

Ed Morales

Journalist and author

Ed Morales is an author and journalist who has written for The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and the Guardian. He was staff writer at The Village Voice and columnist at Newsday. He is the author of Fantasy Island: Colonialism, Exploitation, and the
Betrayal of Puerto Rico, Latinx: The New Force in Politics and Culture, The Latin Beat, and Living in Spanglish. In 2019 Latinx was shortlisted for the British Academy Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.

In 2009, while a Columbia University Revson Fellow, Morales wrote and directed Whose Barrio? an award-winning documentary about the gentrification of East Harlem. In 2022-24 he was a Bridging the Divides Fellow at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies and Princeton. He is currently a lecturer at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

María Isa Pérez Vega

Minnesota State Representative

María Isa Pérez Vega is a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, representing District 65B in the Twin Cities metropolitan area, which includes the cities of Saint Paul and West St. Paul and parts of Dakota and Ramsey Counties. She is a member of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). A lifelong Minnesotan, raised in St. Paul to Puerto Rican parents, she is also a cultural community organizer, international recording artist, and youth worker.

She is an alumni of the prestigious Wilder Foundation Community Equity Program, which brings together Black, Indigenous, and People of Color to advance their knowledge and skills to build community power and solidarity at the Capitol. For her outstanding work with Youthrive Live!, educating incarcerated youth throughout the state of Minnesota, she received the National Hispana Leadership Institute’s “Rising Latina Star" award.

Mayra Rivera Vázquez

2nd Vice Chair, South Carolina Democratic Party

Mayra Rivera Vázquez is a highly organized and versatile professional with an exemplary record of over 10 years working as an independent contractor with nonprofit organizations and governmental agencies, and as a consultant in political campaigns. Mayra currently lives in South Carolina. She is and has been a community activist and volunteer in several nonprofit organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Hopeful Horizons and Lowcountry Immigration Coalition, among others. She worked for the past six years for Deverall Immigration Law firm, handling immigration cases, primarily for Latinos.

Since 2014, Mayra has been an active volunteer in the South Carolina Democratic Party (SCDP). From 2018-2022 she served as Beaufort County Democratic Party chair and today she serves as 2nd Vice Chair of the State party, having become the first Latina to hold both of those positions. She also serves as Chair of the SCDP Hispanic Caucus. Before moving to South Carolina in 2013, in Puerto Rico, Mayra was deputy secretary to the Puerto Rico Election Commission, and served as advisor to the Senate of Puerto Rico, the Secretary of the Department of Economic Development and Commerce, and the Puerto Rico Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She also worked as a Community Reinvestment Officer for RG Premier Bank. Mayra holds a Bachelor’s degree in economics, a Juris Doctor in Law and a Master's Degree in International Law, Foreign Relations, and Trade.

Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz

Associate Professor, UC-Berkeley

Michael Rodríguez-Muñiz is associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses broadly on the politics of race, temporality, and knowledge, primarily in Puerto Rican and Latinx communities and movements. Michael is the author of the award-winning book, Figures of the Future: Latino Civil Rights and the Politics of Demographic Change (Princeton University Press, 2021). His current book project explores the diasporic afterlives of Puerto Rican anticolonial resistance and state repression. Born and raised in Chicago, Michael sits on the Board of the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center and co-directs its archival project, Digitizing the Barrio. He brings to BUDPR’s advisory board over twenty years of experience in Puerto Rican human rights campaigns and community-based activism.

Daniel Vázquez

Attorney

Daniel Vázquez is an international law attorney with expertise in business law, transnational investments, rule of law, human rights, and conflict resolution, including litigation in U.S. and foreign courts with a focus in Latin America and Europe. He is fluent in English, Spanish, Portuguese and reads French. Daniel is licensed in New York, the District of Columbia, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico as well as the U.S. Federal District Court and Bankruptcy Court for the District of Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

Daniel was one of the original co-founders of Boricuas Unidos en la Diáspora in 2017 and he continues to provide invaluable legal and strategic expertise to the organization.