Meet CIRC's Staff and Intern Team!
Julien Ross, Executive Director
Julien Ross joined the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition as its first full-time Director in 2006. Julien also serves on the Executive Committee of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), a national alliance of state coalitions working for just and humane federal immigration reform. During Julien's tenure, CIRC has fought vigorously for citizenship for the undocumented, to protect civil liberties and human rights of immigrant workers and families, and for a full integration of immigrants into community life in the U.S. CIRC has emerged as a reliable and factual source on immigration for policymakers, educators and the media. In 2008, CIRC membership elected its first statewide governing body with equal representation from throughout Colorado, achieving a unified statewide voice to make Colorado a more immigrant friendly state.
In 2006 CIRC assisted in the organizing of the historic Denver "mega-marches" in March and May, with over 75,000 and 100,000 marchers respectively, calling on the U.S. Congress to pass fair and humane immigration reform.
In 2007 CIRC helped launch the "Ya Es Hora Colorado" citizenship campaign to assist thousands of immigrants to fill out their citizenship applications. In 2008 CIRC supported new immigrant and refugee communities in the Western Slope and Denver-Metro area participate in the historic state and national elections through new non-partisan voter registration and voter mobilization programs.
Prior to joining CIRC, Julien helped start up the Houston Interfaith Worker Justice Center and was co-founding coordinator of the Workers Defense Project in Austin, TX from 2001 to 2006, beginning as a volunteer at Casa Marianella. He served on the inaugural Board of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, five years on the Austin Commission on Immigrant Affairs, an advisory board to City Council, and earned his Master's in Public Affairs at the LBJ School, University of Texas at Austin. Julien is a native of Santa Fe, New Mexico, and was a proud restaurant worker for ten years growing up; he has family and lifelong roots in Colorado.
Tel: 303-893-3500, ext. 101 / julien@coloradoimmigrant.org
Gina Millán, Operations Manager
Gina joined CIRC as Operations Manager in May 2007. Gina was born in Morelos, Mexico with a great passion for life and for defending the rights of those who don't have the opportunity or the means to fight for their rights. She received her bachelor's degree in information technology from the Technological Institute of Zacatepec, Morelos in 1994. In 1998, she immigrated to Denver, Colorado in search of her dream to live with dignity and to provide a better future for her 8-year old daughter, Gianella. Gina believes in the cause and is sure that by working together, we will be victorious.
Tel: 303-893-3500, ext. 108 / gina@coloradoimmigrant.org
Alan Kaplan, Communications and Civic Engagement Coordinator
Alan Kaplan, originally from the former Soviet Union, is a new transplant to Colorado, coming to us from New York City. In New York, Alan was the Director of Civic Engagement and New Media at the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC) for four years. There, Alan was in charge of the largest, non-partisan, immigrant-centered voter registration campaign in the country, registering 20,000 immigrant voters a year. He was also the New York State Director for the We Are America Alliance as well as the Ya Es Hora Campaign. Alan has been involved in social justice activism for over a decade having worked as a union organizer with HERE and a field agent for the New York Hotel Trades Council. He was honored in 2008 as a Social Justice Leadership Fellow by the Rockwood Leadership Institute. Prior to joining the NYIC, Alan worked in PR on Wall Street, and consulted for numerous political campaigns. Alan is also a videographer, visual artist and musician. He lives in Denver with his wife, a soon to be veterinarian, three cats, and a big dog.
Tel: 303-893-3500, ext. 106 / alan@coloradoimmigrant.org
Brendan Greene, Rocky Mountain Region Coordinator
Brendan Greene graduated from Denver East High School before going on to receive a Bachelor's Degree in Latino American and Latino Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Following college, he worked for three and a half years directing a national boycott against PictSweet Mushroom Farms in Oxnard, CA for the United Farm Workers of America, AFL-CIO. After the signing of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with PictSweet, Brendan moved to North Carolina and began organizing with the Farm Labor Organizing Committee, AFL-CIO with H-2A "guest worker" tobacco pickers. In 2004, he was a part of a historical organizing drive that succeeded in pressuring the North Carolina Growers Association (NCGA), the nations largest H-2A recruiter, into signing a CBA representing 7,000 H-2A tobacco pickers. This represented the first time in the nations history that guest workers had successfully organized to win a CBA. As a part of this victory, Brendan was sent to open an office in Monterrey, Mexico to oversee the extremely complex recruitment system of the H-2A program and ensure worker protections were enforced on both sides of the border. Brendan's experience as a "transnational" organizer has given him a unique insight into some of the intricacies and problems facing the guest worker program and comprehensive immigration reform. He is currently engaging both undocumented worker and guest workers in Colorado's ski industry as a part of CIRC's new Rocky Mountain Region Organizing Project aimed at growing CIRC's power base in the Rocky Mountains. Tel: 303-893-3500, ext. 107 / brendan@coloradoimmigrant.org
Karen Sherman Pérez, Western Slope Coordinator
A Western Colorado native, Karen has been devoted to working with the immigrant and migrant farmworker communities since returning to Montrose in 2003, after spending five years working as a Peace Corps Volunteer and ESL instructor in El Salvador. During the last three and a half years Karen has coordinated the collaborative efforts of Project Common Ground, a Mesa County community and immigrant integration project, as part of the statewide Supporting Immigrant and Refugee Families Initiative. Since 2006, she has been actively involved with the Western Colorado Justice for Immigrants Committees working to achieve just and humane immigration reform as well as to promote immigrant participation and leadership in the process. Karen has served on a number of CIRC committees and has been active in regional and statewide activities and campaigns including planning for Welcoming Colorado, and has created a strong network among community organizations as well as the U.S. born and immigrant communities, Karen serves as CIRC's Western Colorado Coordinator where she is responsible for overseeing regional campaign and coalition efforts of CIRC member organizations in the Western Slope. karen@coloradoimmigrant.org
Hans Meyer, Legal and Policy Coordinator
Hans Meyer was born in the Philippines, grew up in Aurora, Colorado, and graduated from Overland High School. He attended Pacific Lutheran University, where he graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Global Studies. After college, Hans worked as a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service and an instructor for Outward Bound. He also spent several years living, working and traveling in the Middle East and Latin America, focusing primarily on human rights issues in Guatemala and Chiapas, Mexico.
Upon returning to the United States, Hans re-settled in Denver, Colorado, where he became a paralegal, focusing on asylum and family-based immigration law for clients primarily from Mexico and Central America. In 2002, Hans enrolled in the evening program at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, graduating in 2006. During law school, Hans co-founded the immigration legal program of Catholic Charities of Pueblo, which provided low cost immigration legal services to people throughout southern Colorado. In addition, he interned with the Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project in Arizona and the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network in Denver, focusing on immigration detention work and removal defense. Hans also worked as a law clerk for a number of private immigration firms and worked as part of the law school's civil litigation clinic to create a wage and hour program and pass a state wage and hour bill into law in conjunction with El Centro Humanitario Para Los Trabajadores.
After passing the bar, Hans spent three years as a trial attorney in the Denver office of the Colorado State Public Defender, where he represented indigent clients in misdemeanor, juvenile and felony cases. In addition, Hans also provided technical assistance, trainings and legal resources to attorneys throughout the state regarding the immigration consequences of contact with the criminal justice system for noncitizen clients. Hans is an active member of the Colorado chapter of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the National Immigration Project, the National Lawyers Guild, the ACLU of Colorado, and the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar. hans@coloradoimmigrant.org
Julie Gonzales, Political Coordinator
Julie joined CIRC in December 2008 after three years of organizing at Padres y Jóvenes Unidos around educational justice and immigrant rights in Denver's high schools. While at Padres, she started as the Director of Youth Organizing and later transitioned to a Political Organizer position. She also served on CIRC's steering committee during its strategic planning process. Prior, Julie worked with FRESC and organized community and union members around the redevelopment of the Gates Rubber Plant in southwest Denver. Julie received her undergraduate degree in 2005 from Yale University, where she studied the Chicano movement of the 1960s and its intersection with the current immigrant rights movement. Julie was born on the San Carlos Apache reservation in Arizona, and grew up along the south Texas borderlands, but her family has deep roots in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico and she is proud to call Denver home.
Tel: 303-893-3500, ext. 109 / julie@coloradoimmigrant.org
Born and raised in Longmont, CO, Sonia comes from a strong supportive family. Her father is a hard working noble man from Babicora, Chihuahua Mexico. Her mother is a strong, loving, opinionated Chicana from Longmont CO. Sonia became involved in her community at a young age, working with youth groups, community projects and learning about her culture and the importance of having a sense of belonging. Sonia is currently enrolled at Metro State College of Denver where she is pursuing her bachelor's degree in Human Services with an emphasis in High Risk Youth. Sonia has worked with youth ages 11-21 in various capacities including teaching, literacy, mentor, intervention, group facilitating, program leader and leadership groups, and focuses on culture through dance, art, music, elements of Hip-Hop, theatre, and poetry. She began as a volunteer with CIRC and the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign in September 2009 and joined the staff team in December 2009. Sonia made the decision to take a semester away from school to focus on the urgency of Immigration Reform. She is delighted to be a part of the RI4A and CIRC team and to be working on a movement that is so important to her and her family, friends, students and community. smarquez@reformimmigrationforamerica.org
Jennaweh Leyba, Public Policy Intern
Jennaweh was born and raised in Gallup, New Mexico and arrived in Denver in 2003 to begin her education at the University of Denver. She was accepted into an accelerated 4+1 program in which obtained her B.A. in International Studies and her M.A. in International Security. Her commitment to international relations led her to study abroad in Seville, Spain as well as in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. As a graduate student, she realized that her interest in international relations was fueled by her passion for the protection and advancement of human rights. In pursuit of that passion, she became an intern at Ecumenical Refugee and Immigration Services and has since committed herself to advocating for the rights of refugees, asylum seekers, and immigrants. In addition to her aspirations to protect human rights, she remains committed to being an integral part of her community as a volunteer with Volunteers of America at Manual High School, where she works with ESL students. Currently, Jennaweh is working on her J.D. at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law and hopes to empower immigrants, refugees, and those within her community by working earnestly to protect and advance their rights.
Lee Knox, Public Policy Intern
Lee grew up in North Texas. There, he was involved in politics through both the Denton County Young Democrats and the North Texas Chris Bell for Governor Campaign. In both of these organizations, he worked to create infrastructure and support for the Democratic Party in what was previously a predominately Republican area. Lee earned his BA in Political Science at the University of North Texas. He later moved to Austin where he worked at Texas Campaign for the Environment as well as a law firm focused on the legal needs of local governments. After his positive experience with attorneys, Lee applied to law school and is now a rising 2L at the University of Denver. Lee is committed to becoming an effective advocate for comprehensive immigration reform.
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