AMPT Councils

Antonio Gutierrez is an undocumented anti-displacement community organizer who has lived in Chicago for over 20 years. They are one of the co-founders and current Strategic Coordinator for Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD). As a community organizer, they have organized direct actions, community forums, national convenings, and understands the importance of organizing and developing directly impacted individuals to achieve social justice. Gutierrez has 10 years of non-profit administration & development experience, a degree in Architecture from Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and is also a co-founder and organizer of the Albany Park Defense Network, La Guayabita Autonoma Community Garden and the Autonomous Tenants Union.

Antonio D. Santos is a queer, first-generation latinx activist and community organizer from the southwest side of Chicago. In 2018 he co-founded the Gage Park Latinx Council, which runs a community cultural center in the neighborhood where he was raised. The work of GPLXC has been recognized nationally for its immense impact on the majority Latino working-class community. Antonio's work was recently featured in the book Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification by the University of Chicago Press.

With his experience as a queer activist and knowledge of LGBTQIA+ History, Antonio created a campus-wide faculty and staff Training on LGBTQIA+ identities for the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2019 that is still used to date. Additionally, Antonio has facilitated hundreds of hours of LGBTQIA+ educational programs at the university, High school, and Middle school levels.

In January 2022, Antonio launched Queer Riot to make LGBTQIA+ history accessible to all.

Queer Riot works with QTBIPOC educators to provide comprehensive workshops rooted in queer liberation and equality. Workshops can be customized to your business, organization, or school's needs. Our goal is to empower LGBTQIA+ people and create more inclusive environments for them to thrive by educating all.

​Antonio is currently on the committee for an exhibition on Latinos in Chicago at the Chicago History Museum. He also serves on The Puerto Rican Art Alliance committee for an LGBTQ+ archive that will focus on collecting and preserving Latinx queer culture in the city of Chicago.

Dominicca Washington is a Chicago native raised on the city’s South Side. She is a proud product of the Chicago Public Schools System and a first generation college graduate, from Clark Atlanta University. She also holds an M.Ed in Elementary Education. Immediately following undergrad, Dominicca began teaching in Georgia. Shortly thereafter, she returned home to commit her talents to serving the children of the Chicago Public Schools. She is the founder and executive director of The SHE Society Incorporated: SHE Chicago, a young women’s empowerment program serving inner city teen girls. Dominicca has utilized her love for writing and advocacy to spread awareness of issues in education through published articles featured on Education Post, and in the Chicago Sun-Times. She has also been featured in ChalkBeat Chicago as a Teacher Storyteller encouraging new teachers to advocate for themselves early on in their careers.

Dominicca has been involved in education policy as a Teach Plus Teaching Policy Fellow, where she helped design policy recommendations for the recruitment and retention of teachers of color. She served as an Educators for Excellence Inaugural Policy Fellow. She’s served as a CPS Teacher Ambassador and worked as a member of the CPS Equity Office’s Instructional Equity Work Group. She was also featured as one of Chicago Scholars’ 35 under 35 as one of the city’s most promising new leaders. Dominicca is the proud mother of two beautiful children who fuel her passion daily and drive her commitment to closing equity and achievement gaps for Chicago students.

Edward Redd, founder and executive director of Youth Educational Mentoring Basketball Association (YEMBA), received bachelor’s degrees in electrical engineering and computer engineering from Marquette University. He holds several patents and has designed products including Infusion (iv) pumps, LCDs and casino gaming machines for global companies such as Baxter Healthcare, WMS (Scientific Games) and Entropy International Inc.

YEMBA is a 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization providing afterschool mentoring, tutoring and recreational opportunities for disadvantaged students enrolled in Oak Park middle schools. Since its inception, the program has served approximately 2,000 middle school youth and trained and hired more than 50 high school and college students to work with YEMBA youth.

Edward is an alumnus of the Dominican University’s Community Leadership Program, now known as the Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation’s Leadership Lab. Currently, sits on the Oak Park Community Foundation “Community Works Advisory Board “and “Success of All Youth” committee.

Edwin Martinez, Co-Founder/Executive Director of Centro Sanar and has served as a Social Worker since 2014 providing clinical services to those living on Chicago’s Southwest and West, and Northwest side. Edwin earned his AM/Masters' in Social Work from the University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration with a concentration in Clinical Social Work. He also has a BA in Criminology, Law, and Justice from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Before starting Centro Sanar, Edwin throughout his career has worked across communities accompanying adults and families in their journey to heal and thrive. He has worked in developing healing spaces utilizing violence prevention, restorative justice, and mutual aid frameworks in community settings. Edwin is a proficient Spanish speaker and whose parents migrated from Guerrero, Mexico. Father to two small children, Edwin looks to reimagine what collective healing and the current mental health landscape can look like to authentically accompany people in their journey to heal and thrive.

Estelle Lozano is a brand development professional with expertise in consumer, food, beverage, beauty and wellness industries. Estelle specializes in developing corporate identities, brand strategies, product launches, multi-tier marketing plans, dynamic activations and fostering relationships with major brands and partners. Previous experience includes; Cleveland Avenue, the Italian Trade Agency, Vantage Airport Group, and LBP Packaging.

She is currently the Co-Founder and Chief Strategist at DishRoulette Kitchen.

Jhonathan F. Gómez (él/he/him) is a human rights defender, documentary photographer-artist, educator, and father from Guatemala City. He has worked with community and human rights organizations in Guatemala and the United States for over 15 years. His personal and professional work combine arts, multimedia, and technology for the defense of human rights with a focus on immigrant and indigenous rights.

He and his family moved back to Chicago in May of 2021 after living in Guatemala for 10 years. In Chicago, his work focused on immigrant rights and arts education. He worked as a Day Laborer Organizer with undocumented workers at the Latino Union of Chicago where his passion overlapped with his ongoing projects with youth arts education in the city. In Guatemala, he worked as Communications and Technology Coordinator at the human rights observatory Unidad de Protección a Defensoras y Defensores de Derechos Humanos de Guatemala (UDEFEGUA). He was the recipient of the Voiceless Speak Grant, awarded by the Guatemalan Human Rights Commission in the United States (GHRC) for his work in developing and promoting awareness of human rights violations in Guatemala through multimedia projects.

He is a proud member of the Board of Directors of 18th Street Casa de Cultura, and currently works at the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN) where he continues to support resistance communities in Central America and Latin America at large by providing education on the root causes of migration and advocating politically to stop interventionist, neoliberal and neocolonial U.S. foreign policy.

Maritza Nazario moved to Chicago in 1980 and since then has been doing artistic work all over Chicagoland. She holds a B.A. in Education and Theater plus an M.A. in communications and Theater.

She co-founded En Las Tablas Performing Arts 17 years ago. Since then, she has dedicated her career to helping in transforming the community of Hermosa and surrounding areas through the use of arts education, social emotional learning, environmental justice and health education with a trauma informed and social justice lens.