CA Policy Forum: Get Out the Vote - A Playbook for Nonprofits & Funders

Luis Montero-Adams (He/Him/His) serves as the Executive Director of Engage San Diego and Engage San Diego Action Fund. Luis is a passionate advocate and believes strongly in community organizing. Throughout his career he has worked in progressive organizations focusing on direct service, education, civic engagement, and policy. Prior to working at Engage San Diego, Luis served as the Advocacy and Civic Engagement Manager at the San Diego LGBT Community Center. In this role, Luis led policy and budget advocacy at the city and county levels, and community outreach efforts for voter education, census, and redistricting.

Prior to his work at The Center, Luis was a Health Educator at San Ysidro Health. Luis also served Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest for 10 years in several roles spanning the agency’s three pillars: education, health services, and advocacy. His time at PPPSW ignited his passion for community organizing, coalition building, and voter outreach.

While his commitment to the San Diego community was cemented as an adult, Luis’s family established roots in the San Diego region when he was a young child. Luis is from Los Angeles and was the first of two children born to undocumented immigrants. Concerned with increasing violence near their home and a desire to be closer to their extended family in Tijuana, Luis’s family moved to San Diego when he was four. After obtaining their US citizenship and being priced out of homeownership, his family moved to Tijuana when Luis was eight. For eight years, Luis joined his father as a member of the transborder community, commuting to school each day. Although Luis moved back and has lived in the City of San Diego since September 13, 2001, his binational roots continue to shape his perspective and how he engages the region.

Luis earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Women’s Studies with a minor in Latin American Studies from San Diego State University in 2017, after transferring from San Diego City College. Lu

Brian joined Nonprofit VOTE as its new Executive Director in 2014, bringing 20 years of nonprofit management experience with him. Since then, he has worked successfully to raise the visibility of Nonprofit VOTE’s work on the national stage while bringing the voter engagement strategies of Nonprofit VOTE to scale, leveraging new resources, documenting the impact of its work, and forging new partnerships. He has also played a key role in leading Nonprofit VOTE’s management of National Voter Registration Day. Prior to his tenure at Nonprofit VOTE, Brian served as Executive Director of two other organizations, including United for a Fair Economy (UFE), an organization recognized for its sentinel work to raise the veil of growing economic inequality, and Tennesseans for Fair Taxation, a statewide coalition working to pass comprehensive tax reform. A south Louisiana native with Cajun roots, Brian started his career as a community organizer before moving on to organize in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Tracy is an artist, advocate and consultant who has worked at the intersections of art and economic and community development for over twenty years. As a consultant, she has contributed to the success of creative businesses and cultural nonprofits through the design and management of programming, marketing, fundraising and organizational development systems. As a creative economy advocate, she has organized campaigns and forums, developed policy language for local land use and economic development plans, produced cross-sector collaborations, published reports and articles and has served as a keynote speaker in various venues. She is a painter and theatre artist who specializes in devised works. Her artistic practices have informed the numerous creative placemaking and civic imagining platforms she has produced. Some of her favorite projects include developing the Creative Community Thomas Fire Recovery Programs, producing and facilitating the Westside Community Innovation Exchange, serving as Arts Impact Director for Downtown Oxnard and directing WeSource, a youth-led devised theatre project.

Tracy has a Masters in Public and Policy and Administration from California Lutheran University and a BFA in Performance Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She was called from Chicago to Los Angeles to work as an intern at Highways Performance Space and never left. After 13 years in LA, she moved with her husband John to Ventura County in 2006 to raise their daughter Ruby in the wild. They currently call Santa Paula home.