Valeria Fernández

Founder and Executive Director,
Altavoz Lab

Valeria Fernández is an immigrant from Uruguay and the founder and executive director of Altavoz Lab, which she founded in 2022. She is also a journalist, filmmaker, and producer. She started her career at a small Spanish-language newspaper in Phoenix, Arizona, and quickly learned how to write for immigrant communities — rather than just about them. She transitioned to writing for English-language media, including The Guardian, Pacific Standard, Latino USA, and PRX’s The World. Valeria won the American Mosaic Journalism Prize for her reporting on marginalized communities.

As a former professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Valeria helped develop the next generation of Latino and immigrant journalists. During her time as managing editor of palabra, a publication created by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, she advocated for fair pay and protections for freelance journalists serving disinvested communities. She led several award-winning projects and helped shape the careers of hundreds of independent journalists.

Now, as executive director of Altavoz Lab, she continues to advocate for local reporters — whom she sees as trusted messengers and vital to democracy.

Ruxandra Guidi

Impact and Engagement Manager 

Ruxandra Guidi has been telling stories for more than two decades. After earning a Master’s degree in journalism from U.C. Berkeley in 2002, she has worked as a documentary audio producer, a features writer, and an editor for both English and Spanish publications throughout the U.S. and Latin America. Fonografia Collective, co-founded in 2005 with her partner Bear Guerra, has consulted with various news and community organizations on placemaking, trainings and public engagement in an effort to make empathetic and culturally-sensitive documentary storytelling more accessible.

Alyssa Cruz

Fellowship Coordinator

Alyssa Cruz is a recent graduate of Ohio University with degrees in journalism and Spanish. She is the Social Media Manager for palabra, a multimedia platform by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ). She has served as the Fellowship Coordinator for Altavoz Lab for three years and interned for 60 Minutes in New York City.

Yunuen Bonaparte

Operations and Program Coordinator

Yunuen Bonaparte is a New York–based independent art director and visual journalist deeply committed to community-centered storytelling. She brings her lived experience as an immigrant to every project she undertakes. She has worked as an art director and photo editor at palabra and Narratively. Her photography has appeared in NPR, The Washington Post, The Hechinger Report, Al Día News, El Universal, and Americas Quarterly, among others. At Altavoz Lab, Yunuen coordinates the Nick Oza Visual Fellowship, mentoring and empowering community-rooted photojournalists across the Southwest who share Nick’s vision of storytelling grounded in empathy, integrity, and respect.

Jimena Sandoval

Outreach and Communications Coordinator

Jimena Sandoval is a social communicator who studied at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas (UCA) in El Salvador. She is an entrepreneur and communicator known for her leadership in promoting equity and visibility for the 2SLGBTQIA+ community. As the founder of Noisy Digital, the first trans-led marketing agency, Jimena focuses on empowering marginalized communities, particularly the TGI (transgender, gender expansive, and intersex) population. She has been involved in significant initiatives alongside organizations like The TransLatin@ Coalition and Bienestar Human Services. With a strong background in PR and marketing, Jimena works to amplify the voices and stories of the LGBTQIA+ community, creating impactful change and opportunities. She is also a collaborator for palabra by NAHJ.

Ricardo Sandoval-Palos

Ricardo Sandoval-Palos is the Public Editor of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and the co-founder of palabra, the digital magazine of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

Jude Joffe-Block

Jude Joffe-Block is a journalist, currently based in Northern California after years in Phoenix, Arizona. She has worked for NPR, The Associated Press and public radio stations in the West. She is the co-author with Terry Greene Sterling of Driving While Brown: Sheriff Joe Arpaio versus the Latino Resistance. 

Dianna Náñez

Dianna Náñez is an executive editor and co-founder at the nonprofit newsroom, Arizona Luminaria. She’s an investigative journalist and narrative writer whose story of Indigenous and borderlands communities was part of the USA TODAY Network’s 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning team coverage for explanatory journalism. Náñez worked 15 years at The Arizona Republic as a reporter and editor, where she’s earned awards for government, social issues and public safety reporting.