Staff & Board

Rosa oversees the CFJ San Jose region organizing team, leads the organization’s base building and leadership development across the four regions, and contributes to the statewide strategy.

Her commitment to Social and Racial Justice is rooted on her experience as an english learner, first generation immigrant, and being a CFJ leader when she was a student at Overfelt High School in East San Jose. Throughout her time at CFJ, Rosa has been part of different campaign victories in the East Side Union High School District including Bilingual Certification, the adoption of A-G as default curriculum for graduation, and Student Voice on the district’s budgeting process. She has also led efforts that engaged youth leaders of color to win local and state measures. Rosa played a key role in statewide campaigns to stop the California High School Exit Exam, win equitable funding for schools and student voice which has given students across California decision making power over their school funding.

In addition to Education Justice Rosa has experience organizing immigrant communities, and contributed to the development of the Immigration Rapid Response Network in Santa Clara County. She believes that in order to achieve meaningful change, those impacted need to be at the forefront of organizing efforts. Rosa is a first generation college student and received her B.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. She enjoys live music, going for hikes and participating in direct action!

Nhada organizes in San Jose, supporting students’ leadership in their movement to demand space, build power, and claim ownership of their education. She draws grounding and inspiration from her own experiences as a high school and college student in San Jose and the southern Bay Area, as well as her involvement in organizing as a student across coalitions, organizing in her own faith community, and organizing in San Jose around gentrification and displacement.

Nhada believes that access to a holistic and culturally relevant education in which each student is supported and centered is a fundamental right for all, and that working for change in education uplifts all communities and pushes back against all systems and intersections of oppression. She holds a BS in Ethnic Studies and Political Science from Santa Clara University, and enjoys ice cream, board games, taking naps, and spending time with her loved ones.

Mauro serves CFJ as Co-Executive Director, providing support, vision, and thought partnership for statewide strategy, regional programs, collaboratives, fundraising, and more. Mauro has worked across nonprofits, K12 public schools, colleges, and universities over the past twenty years and brings a generous insider-outsider approach to culture and systems to change. They have created and expanded nonprofit youth organizing programs to meet the hopes and dreams of the most marginalized, including queer and trans-BIPOC youth from immigrant and low-income communities. In San Francisco Unified, Mauro led district-wide efforts to address the needs of LGBTQ+ students of color through student support and internal capacity building focused on the teacher, counselor, administrator, and social worker trainings. After spending so much valuable time with community organizers and educators over the years, Mauro pursued graduate education as an opportunity to formalize intergenerational wisdom in academic research and writing. They hold an M.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation and an Ed.D. in International and Multicultural Education. Mauro’s work has focused on racial, gender, and educational justice because for too long, powerful BIPOC, young women, queer, trans, and immigrant students have been held back from fully thriving in spaces of learning. Because all these people are part of Mauro’s given and chosen families, they insist that this brilliance be nurtured to its fullest extent in K12 public education. Outside of work, Mauro spends their time as an emerging documentary filmmaker, graphic novelist, and landscape photographer, striving to make the best use of visual storytelling as an intervention on book learning as the only route to critical questions and thinking. In addition to this, Mauro also spends time working with families in support of Indigenous two-spirit revival, healing, and visioning.

Karn is the Policy and Alliance Director and works to advance CFJ’s vision for justice by building power through policies and people. Born and raised in Chicago, Karn has been able to work with multi-racial grassroots organizations in Chicago, the Bay area, and Portland. In Chicago, he organized Asian American youth around immigration reform and the DREAM Act. He served as the Director of Student Organizing at Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth in San Francisco, where he organized black and brown youth and working-class families around education justice issues. In Portland, OR, he worked with high school students to start a youth-led organizing group that started and won an ethnic studies campaign for Portland Public High Schools. He also organized with incarcerated adults at Oregon State Penitentiary, to start and win a campaign to build a healing garden inside prison grounds. He also co-founded the Portland chapter of Asians 4 Black Lives, which works with Asian Americans to organize around Black liberation. Karn continues to do this work because he trusts the vision of young people, especially when it comes to education, since they’re the ones who are the most impacted by these issues. Karn is also really bad at cooking but really good at eating.

Justine Santos (she/her) is a community organizer, facilitator, and narrative strategist, and a hella proud Bay Area’n, committed to the fight for liberation for the last 15+ years. Justine started organizing as a high school youth around various issues: anti-racism, anti-imperialism, environmental, housing and educational justice. Upon recognizing the importance of building power from the grassroots, the impact of organizing on her own development as a teen, and seeing how transformation can happen when those closest to harm/oppression are resourced, have agency and leadership, she never stopped organizing.

She is a Senior Strategy Director at Californians for Justice – a statewide youth powered organization fighting to end racism in public schools so that we can build an education system built by and for all of us. At CFJ, she’s excited that she gets to co-conspire with Black, Indigenous, Brown high school youth and communities of color in Long Beach, Fresno, Oakland and San Jose, and our allies within the education system (policymakers, educators, district & school staff, families & caregivers, labor unions) on what it will take for all of our schools to get free.

Arvin works as the Statewide Campaigns Manager that coordinates with Californian for Justice’s organizers and youth to get their communities civically engaged and striving for racial and educational justice. As a high school student in Union City, he took ethnic studies classes that started building foundational knowledge on issues of history and social justice. Because of that experience, in college he became politically active, attending actions in defense of the college of Ethnic Studies at SFSU, housing issues in SF’s SoMa district, working at the student equity center at CSUEB, and helping found the Northern California Pilipinx American Student Alliance (NCPASA). After graduating, he worked in government, organizing with local grassroots organizations on various issues, working the rapid response Immigration defense hotline for Alameda County advocating for Abolishing ICE, and especially in non-profit organizing helping put together civic engagement campaigns to empower youth, the local Filipino and East Bay communities through the electoral system. Arvin was born in Toronto, Canada but raised in the East Bay Area. He also graduated from Cal State East Bay with a major in Political Science with a focus in Public Administration and a minor in Ethnic Studies. In his free time, he’s out in nature, playing with his cat Wesker, or (safely) out with friends.