Reyna Montoya
CEO & Founder, Aliento Education Fund
Overview:
Aliento envisions community that nurtures human potential undefined by immigration status. To achieve this vision, Aliento transforms trauma into hope and action with undocumented, DACA, and mixed-immigration-status families. Directly affected youth lead Aliento, working with allies invested in the well-being, leadership development, and healing of those affected by the inequities of lacking an immigration status. The Boulder Fund will support our educational initiatives and increasing our organizational capacity to impact youth and families.
Bio:
Reyna Montoya was born in Tijuana, Mexico and immigrated to Arizona in 2003 fleeing violence. She is a DACAmented social entrepreneur, community organizer, educator, and dancer. . She is also a founding member of the first Teach For America DACA Advisory Board. Reyna is a first generation graduate who holds bachelor's degrees in Political Science and Transborder Studies and a Dance minor from Arizona State University; she also holds an M.Ed. in Secondary Education from Grand Canyon University. She also completed an executive education program from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
She has engaged in local, statewide and national platforms to advance justice for immigrant communities. In 2013, she was the lead organizer, who prevented an immigration bus of undocumented immigrants from deportation in Phoenix, AZ for the first time in the nation’s history. In the same year, with the help of the community, she stopped her father’s deportation. She was also recognized as 2017 #NBCLatino20 and the Muhammad Ali Center as the 2018 Humanitarian Recipient for Spirituality. She hopes to share her talents and skills with the community to co-create healing spaces, education equity, transformational change, and leadership development of our immigrant youth and mixed-status families. In her volunteer time, she also serves as a member of the Leadership Council for ASU Lodestar Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Innovation and is a Board Member at Chicanos Por la Causa (CPLC). She enjoys going on long walks, reading, and spending time with her two fur babies!
Reyna Montoya is a 2016 Soros Justice Fellow, a 2017 Echoing Green Fellow, a Forbes: 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur, and an ATHENA 2019 recipient by the Greater Phoenix Chamber of Commerce among many other local to global awards.