Services
Documentary and social impact photography
Visual storytelling and photo essays
Event Photography
Portraits
Arts and Culture
Grassroots leadership development
Organizing is sacred work, difficult, joyful, heartbreaking and deeply personal. Organizers need the kind of support that comes from on-the-ground experience and hard learned lessons. It’s essential that social movements invest in harnessing the leadership and talents of budding organizers and leaders early on, when they first realize what the work entails. My greatest honor and biggest achievement has been to recruit, onboard, coach, and learn alongside new organizers and emerging leaders. Many of them have grown into leadership roles and are driving exciting organizing work at the local and national level.
-
Onboarding, training and coaching new organizers and emerging leaders
-
Community assessments and participatory action research processes
-
Popular political education ​​​​​​​
New Florida Majority 2029 Statewide People's Assembly
Organizing Director and Project Manager
Creative and Cultural Organizing
Growing up in Ecuador I understood early on that popular culture and traditional artistic expressions are integral to social movements. In my work organizing in Florida and nationwide, I trained and supported organizers to integrate art and popular culture into their work, and to encourage members to cultivate their talents and traditions as part of their participation in movement. I see these as key to successful organizing—it's where we get real depth and broad reach, and the best invitation for people to find their political home and bring others along.
​​
-
Tools for grassroots cultural organizing
-
Grassroots and neighborhood-based event planning for base building, GOTV efforts, campaign work, etc
-
Local and indigenous talent scouting and recruitment
-
Documentation and narrative support​
Sample work and impact
Rebuild.us and Organizing Resilience
Led by survivors of climate disasters and rooted in grassroots organizing, Rebuild.us and its strategy hub Organizing Resilience bring together disaster response professionals, community organizers, philanthropy experts, fundraising wizards, and fiscal oversight specialists dedicated to building a new disaster relief system ready to meet the new climate reality.
New Florida Majority- Organizing Director
2018-2021. My political home since 2011, I returned to NFM as Organizer Director to launch it's dues paying membership, help give shape to the People’s Assembly process and build leadership development programs for thousands of members and activists throughout Florida
Florida Rising - Membership Director 2021 -2023 - The role of the membership team is to train and politicize members, give them tools and paths to lead the work and make decisions at People's Assemblies and campaign committees. FL Rising member leaders are trained to lead popular political education trainings and participatory processes.
Latinas en Marcha, a political home for progressive Latinas in Florida. Under the sponsorship of New Florida Majority, FLIC and the Miami Workers Center, LEM was launched in 2018 with a summit that included poetry, music, food, and politics which also featured legendary labor leader Dolores Huerta as keynote speaker. Latinas en Marcha has hosted multiple events and engaged thousands of Latinas in the political process through its growing digital presence.
Democracy Rising
First Women of Color Democracy Transformation Summit, 2023. Collaborated in the vision, agenda planning, recruitment and facilitation. The summit convened a cohort of women of color leaders, from elected officials to grassroots leaders from around the country, to come together for co-learning, collective visioning and relationship building.
Florida for All, Latinx Constituency Program - 2020 In partnership with the Venezuelan American Caucus, the Miami Freedom Project , Florida Farmworkers Association, Dominican American National Foundation, Semillas de Colombia and La Mesa Boricua, I coordinated a program to empower country-of-origin organizations to create digital content and organize in-person events to engage their base of voters speaking to the unique nuances of their countries and cultures. ​​
Popular Political Education - 2012 - 2023
As part of my organizing work, I collaborated in curriculum development and facilitation of many political education programs, created bilingual content, facilitation guides and facilitation trainings for member leaders and organizers across the Florida social justice movement ecosystem.
National Domestic Workers Alliance - Membership Director. 2016-2018 -. Launched the individual membership programs to recruit nannies, care workers and home cleaners and connect them to benefits, resources and strategies to organize for better working conditions as part of the domestic workers movement.
New Florida Majority - Field Director, 2012 . Tested a volunteer voter engagement program with a team of “impact” organizers entrusted with turning out the vote in their own communities. Read report
Collaborators, clients and previous employers
Testimonials
“The best thing about working on a team with Serena is how grounded and dependable she is. She brings both clarity and care to every project, which makes it easy for people to trust her leadership and feel comfortable collaborating.
Serena is the kind of leader who helps others grow. She gives constructive feedback in a way that feels supportive rather than critical, her steadiness builds confidence and trust across the team and she’s quick to celebrate others’ wins.
She consistently ties our work back to purpose and values, helping the team stay aligned with the bigger vision. Working with her pushes everyone to bring their best selves forward.”
​
Mike Todd
Director of Leadership Development
Florida Rising
“Serena is creative, thoughtful and leads with brilliance and kindness. Serena has the rare ability to balance expertise with open-mindedness”
​
Alejandra Rondón
National Organizing and Advocacy Manager
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Rights
“It was a privilege to collaborate with Serena as an organizer and as a photographer through repeated hurricanes and disasters in Brazoria County. She came to visit our community, speak to our neighbors, share our story and help move resources for our organizing work.”
Gwendolyn Jones
Climate Conversations of Brazoria County, TX