Aurea Montes-Rodriguez is the Executive Vice President at Community Coalition and has worked at the organization for 25 years. Born in Mexico and raised in South LA she developed a passion for creating change at the local level. Aurea has been a key leader responsible for building the organization’s youth programs to fight for educational equity, leading efforts to keep children in family care and out of the foster care system, helping to build organizing capacity in South LA, and leading a capital campaign to transform the organization’s headquarters into a state-of-the-art community hub for community organizing. She is currently leading an effort to build a Center for Community Organizing to harness the power of communities and support activists across the nation in multi-racial organizing towards our collective freedom.