Our Team

Annette Uriostegui serves as Alianza America’s associate director of operations. In this role, Annette seeks to give administrative support to her team while finding innovative ways to sustain and maximize organizational capacity. Before joining Alianza Americas in June 2020, Annette’s leadership and organizational management come from managing legal offices and community-based non-profit organizations both in her hometown of Melrose Park and Chicago. After being enlisted in the Army National Guard for 8 years, Annette received a Bachelors in Gender and Women Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago. As someone whose family has been impacted by the broken immigration system in the United States, her personal experience as a Mexican-American daughter of immigrant parents is what has always rooted her work in social justice and advocacy with an emphasis on human and immigrant rights.

Bruce Tyler is the Systemic Inequities Coordinator at Alianza Americas. In this role, Bruce works with other staff and with Alianza’s member organizations to develop and implement education and outreach strategies that address the inequities impacting Latinx and Latin American immigrant communities. Currently he manages a grant from the Cook County Department of Health to improve access to mental health services and reduce related stigma. He also oversees our work around racial, ethnic and gender discrimination, as well as economic exclusion in immigrant communities. Bruce has extensive experience working with immigrants and refugees from Latin American countries. In his previous experience, Bruce helped manage a child nutrition program for farmworker families in the Rio Grande Valley under La Unión del Pueblo Entero (formerly United Farm Workers) in San Juan, Texas. During his time in Boston Bruce helped refugees from Central American countries obtain official refugee status by supporting their application process through INS. Most recently, Bruce worked at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) teaching Latin American Studies, Mexican Studies, and Latin American Environmental Studies. Bruce holds a Master’s degree from the Universidad de Guadalajara, where he completed fieldwork among artisanal fishing communities in Jalisco, Mexico. He is ABD in Development Sociology from Cornell University, and is currently completing a MPHc in Community Health Sciences at UIC.

Danielle Koelling joined Alianza Americas in 2023 and works as the Resource Development Associate supporting the team through grant writing and fundraising initiatives. She has a passion for promoting equity in our social and economic systems and works to ensure that the solutions to our most pressing issues are inherently just and attainable. Danielle holds her MSc in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy from Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) where she specialized in systemic inequalities. She also holds her undergraduate degree from University of Denver in Geography. She is a former Peace Corps Volunteer having served in Panama and worked with MiAmbiente on a variety of environmental projects including waste management education and projects preventing deforestation.

Dulce Guzmán is executive director of Alianza Americas. Until August 2024, she was the Deputy Director of Institutional Development at Alianza Americas. Originally from Mexico, Dulce is a DACA recipient with several years of experience working with immigrant-serving community-based organizations in the areas of education, community engagement, fundraising, and organizational planning. She first joined Alianza Americas in 2018 as a policy and research graduate intern, and has since taken part of the organization as a member, leadership institute participant, and staff. She is an alum of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute where she served as the Social Equity Graduate Fellow for the 10th Congressional District of Illinois, focusing on immigration policy and outreach. Dulce obtained her Master’s Degree in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago.

Helena Olea currently serves as associate Deputy Director at Alianza Americas. She is an international human rights lawyer with advocacy and litigation experience before intergovernmental bodies and governmental agencies. Helena is an attorney authorized to practice law in Colombia, with an L.L.M. from the University of Notre Dame. She has over 12 years of teaching and research experience on human rights, migration, refugees, and gender. She has also worked for non-governmental organizations in Colombia and Chile. Helena has dedicated her professional life to the human rights of migrants, refugees, internally displaced persons, and women, combining advocacy and academia.

Based in Chicago, IL, Jonathan joined the Alianza Americas team in November of 2021 as the Data and Support Resources Manager for the Somos Salud project. In this role, Jonathan helps manage, process, report and analyze data for two federally funded projects. Jonathan has previously worked on a campaign promoting a series of immigrant rights legislations and as a teaching assistant at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he obtained both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Latin American and Latino Studies. Jonathan hopes to use his deep understanding of Latin American and Latino history and his commitment to humane policy to help carry out Alianza Americas mission and help the Somos Salud project address health disparities in the Latino community.

Oscar A. Chacón is a co‐founder and senior strategy advisor of Alianza Americas. He was executive director of Alianza Americas from 2007 until August 2024. Before becoming executive director of Alianza Americas, Oscar served in leadership positions at the Chicago‐based Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights, the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the Boston‐based Centro Presente, and several other community-based and international development organizations. Oscar has also served on multiple advisory committees to national and international processes including the Civil Society Consultation process associated with the Global Forum on Migration and Development and the World Social Forum on Migration. Oscar is a frequent national and international spokesperson on transnationalism, economic justice, the link between migration and development, migrant’s integration processes, human mobility, migration policies, racism and xenophobia; and U.S. Latino community issues.

Sandra Diaz is a DACA recipient born in Mexico. She immigrated to the United States when she was five years old and grew up in Houston, Texas. She graduated from Houston Community College with an associate's degree in computer networking and administration. In 2017, when the DACA program entered a state of limbo, Sandra and her family were forced to make another move to Illinois. Shortly after, she began working for a local nonprofit that helped immigrant families and implemented a civic engagement program that elevates the voices of people traditionally underrepresented in civic duty and has participated in projects that seek action through the use narrative. Along with five other immigrant women and daughters of immigrants, she created the Center for Immigrant Progress, a grassroots organization focused on social justice and immigrant rights. CIP works to meet the needs of their community, serving students and young professionals, whether they are undocumented or children of immigrants, as well as their families, so that they can thrive in their new communities.

Yanira Arias joined the Alianza Americas team in August 2014 to coordinate the network’s response to the detention and stigmatization of thousands of Central American children and their families at the U.S. southern border. In December of that same year, she became Alianza Americas' new national campaigns manager. A native of El Salvador, she brings more than a decade of experience in the field of public health, with special expertise in community mobilization and participation, community organizing, and capacity building to address health disparities and social justice issues. From 2003 to 2012 Yanira was part of the Latino Commission on AIDS in New York, where she served as Director of Community Organizing for the Latinos in the Deep South. In that role, she led the development and implementation of the Dennis deLeon Sustainable Leadership Institute for emerging leaders in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. Yanira graduated from the University of El Salvador in 1996 with a degree in journalism.

Zorayda Ávila is originally from Zacapu, Michoacan, and now lives in Chicago. She holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from Morelia University and a certificate in sexual education from the Mexican Institute of Sexology in Mexico City, as well as a graduate degree in citizen integration politics from the University of Valencia. Before joining Alianza Americas, Zory served as executive director of Casa Michoacan, a cultural and educational center in Chicago. She is a board member of the Network of Mexican Leaders and Organizations and a member of the Transnational Women's Collective (Colectivo de Mujeres Trasnacionales). Zory's focus areas are in mental health and human rights, with a particular focus on building women’s leadership and strengthening the capacity of immigrant women as community leaders.