Mónica is a Program Officer for Mesoamerica at Foundation for a Just Society. She has been working for social and gender justice for over twenty years, including ten years in progressive and feminist philanthropy. Mónica, a queer migrant based in Brooklyn, New York, who came to the U.S. in 2001, was granted asylum in 2006. She has deep roots in the Andean region of Colombia. Prior to FJS, Mónica worked for Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice as a program officer and associate director of programs to coordinate and support programs such as the US and the Latin America and Caribbean portfolios, and the Global Arts Fund. Mónica believes in the power of grassroots movements, in artivism as a tool to imagine and create a more just world, and in interdependence as a way to heal and sustain our planet and our communities.