Ana Perez: Consultant

“When I was 11, I crossed the border without documents. At the crossing, my brother was put in the front seat of the car and my mom and I in the trunk. When I asked why, I was told, “your brother has light skin and you don’t.” This was my first painful awakening to the multiple ways oppression works in the US and was the foundation of my commitment to build equity and justice. Because of this experience, I am passionate about understanding how overlapping identities – gender, immigration, and race (to name a few), can increase the marginalization and oppression of individuals and groups. I am devoted to teaching others to understand and challenge systems of oppression in order to rebuild these systems to foster equity.”

Ana Cecilia Pérez is an immigrant rights leader and a passionate leadership and community builder. She has been at the forefront of organizing effective multi-racial and multi-sector coalitions on local and national levels.

Ana Cecilia Pérez is also an independent consultant working with non-profit organizations, government agencies and foundations to increase their impact and organizational effectiveness. Ms. Pérez has been consulting for more than 15 years. She has expertise in organizational change, multicultural transformative leadership development, and in building collaborations rooted in equity and community empowerment frameworks. She is fully bilingual and bicultural and has worked in Spanish-only professional settings in the US and Latin America.

Ms. Pérez’s consulting areas include: strategic planning, crisis management, media and communications strategy, challenging oppression dynamics, increasing equity (policy, teams, services provided, etc.) and conflict resolution.

Prior to becoming a consultant, Ms. Pérez directed multiple prominent organizations and has held senior positions in civil rights, national and international policy groups including CARECEN SF, Presente.org, and Global Exchange. Prior to her social justice non-profit experience, Ana worked as a print and radio journalist and worked for KALW radio, Latino USA and wrote for multiple outlets.

Ms. Pérez and her family fled the Salvadoran civil war in the early 1980s. She grew up in the Central American community in Los Angeles, benefitting from the 1986 immigration reform law. She has a B.A. from University of California San Diego and a Masters in Journalism from University of California Berkeley.

Ana lives in Oakland, CA.