Board

Originally from Oakland, Esperanza has lived in the beautiful Bay Area all her life. She first became politically active in high school volunteering with the UFW on the grape boycott, and later became involved in student activism at UC Berkeley. Her career was spent working in various capacities in community nonprofit organizations and on political campaigns. Now that she has recently retired, she hopes to indulge her love of art, writing, and travel with her partner. 

Robert C. Goodman is chair of the firm’s Environmental Law Practice Group and a member of the Retail Industry Trade Regulation Practice Group.

Mr. Goodman represents a wide variety of clients, including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, small businesses and individuals in litigation arising under federal and state environmental law and in negotiations with regulatory agencies. He has extensive experience in cases arising under CERCLA (the “Superfund” statute), RCRA, Proposition 65, CEQA, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act, and has tried or arbitrated numerous cases to judgment. He has been recognized as a “Northern California Super Lawyer” by the publishers of San Francisco magazine and Law and Politics magazine in the area of Environmental Litigation.

Karina Hodoyán is an Associate Professor in the Languages, Literatures, and Cultures department and the Director of the Center for Latinx Studies in the Americas at the University of San Francisco. She previously served as the Academic Director of the MA in Migration Studies. Prof. Hodoyán holds a Masters in Comparative Literature from San Francisco State University with a focus on Interamerican Literature and Culture, as well as a PhD from the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Stanford University. Her research interests include Mexican, US-Mexico Border, and Chicanx Literary and Cultural Studies, Visual and Performance Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Fernando Marquez is a diversity educator and workforce + social impact strategist. Lifelong San Franciscan- proud son of immigrants. Convener of nonprofits and community-engaged leaders to advance equity + inclusion initiatives to empower historically excluded communities. Believer in the power of the youth, and driven by the conviction that the answers are held by those most directly impacted by our social issues. 

Edward J. McCaughan, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at San Francisco State University, is a researcher, writer, and curator. He earned a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, an M.A. in Latin American Studies from Stanford University, and a B.A. in Latin American Studies from UCSC.

Ed has authored several books, including Arte y movimientos sociales: politica cultural in México y Aztlán  (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Cuajimalpa, in press, 2023); Art and Social Movements: Cultural Politics in Mexico and Aztlán (Duke University Press, 2012); Reinventando la revolución: La renovación del discurso de la izquierda en Cuba y México (Siglo XXI, 1999); Reinventing Revolution: The Renovation of Left Discourse in Cuba and Mexico (Westview Press, 1997); México-Estados Unidos: Relaciones económicas y lucha de clases (with Peter Baird, Ediciones ERA, 1982); and Beyond the Border: Mexico and the U.S Today (with Peter Baird, NACLA, 1979). 

Among McCaughan’s edited books are: Mexican and Chicanx Social Movements (with Maylei Blackwell, Social Justice, 2015); The Famous 41: Sexuality and Social Control in Mexico, 1901 (with Robert McKee Irwin and Michelle Rocío Nasser, Palgrave, 2003); Latin America Faces the 21^st Century: Reconstructing a Social Justice Agenda (with Susanne Jonas, Westview, 1994); Guatemala: Tyranny on Trial (with Susanne Jonas and Elizabeth Sutherland Martínez, Synthesis Publications, 1984).

Ed is also the author of more than a dozen journal articles, including most recently “’We Didn’t Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us’: Artists’ Images of the US-Mexico Border and Immigration,” Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, Vol. 2, No. 1 (2020), also published in Spanish in Argumentos: Estudios críticos de la sociedad (nú. 90, 2019).

He has curated exhibitions at Galería de la Raza, San Francisco State University, the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca, and the Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo.

Ed is a long-time activist in anti-imperialist, international solidarity, human rights, immigrant rights, and labor rights movements.

He lives in Santa María Atzompa, Oaxaca, Mexico, with his husband, artist John Kaine, his 95-year-old suegra, two dogs, and two cats.

Roberto Gutiérrez Varea is a stage director, researcher, and academic working at the intersection of performance and violent social conflict. 

Roberto Gutiérrez Varea began his career in theater in his native Argentina. His research and creative work focus is on live performance as means of resistance and peacebuilding in the context of social conflict and state violence. Varea’s stage work in the United States spans four decades and includes directing premieres of works by Latine playwrights such as Manuel Puig, Migdalia Cruz, Maria Fornés, Ariel Dorfman, Cherríe Moraga, and José Rivera, among many others. His community-based work includes the founding of Soapstone Theatre Company, a collective of formerly incarcerated men and women survivors of violent crime, El Teatro Jornalero!, a performance company focusing on the experience of Latin American immigrant workers, and currently, serving as founding member of La Lengua Teatro en Español. He is a regular contributor and editor to international journals in performance and peacebuilding such as emisférica (NYU, US), Peace Review (Routledge, US), Contemporary Theater Review (Routledge, UK), Revista Conjunto (Cuba), and Revista Heterotopías (Argentina) where he also sits on the Editorial Board. Roberto is co-editor and co-author of the two-volume anthology “Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict” (New Village Press, Oakland-NYC) as well as a contributor to several books on performance studies. He has been the recipient of major grants and awards including the San Francisco Arts Commission, the California Arts Council, Creative Capital, and the MAP Fund. He is a member of the Steering Committee of Theater Without Borders and serves on the Advisory Board of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Gardens Festival and Middle East-focused Golden Thread Productions. Varea is a Full Professor and founding faculty of the University of San Francisco’s Critical Diversity Studies Program and the Performing Arts and Social Justice Department, where he currently serves as Chair.