Our Board of Directors are volunteers who share their expertise and passion with CBDIO. We always have at least three farmworker leaders on the Board in addition to community members and allies committed to our organization’s success. 

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Nayamin Martinez

President, Mexicana-Fresno

Nayamin Martinez is the Executive Director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network (CCEJN). Prior to joining CCEJN, Nayamin worked for the Madera County Public Health Department as a Health Education Coordinator and for ten years was the Health Projects Coordinator for the Binational Center for the Development of the Oaxacan Indigenous Communities. Nayamin has vast experience in working with immigrant and indigenous communities across the San Joaquin Valley managing public health programs in a variety of environmental topics including pesticides and air pollution. She has conducted participatory research and launched leadership and civic engagement programs. Nayamin serves in various advisory groups including the Environmental Justice Advisory Group of the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District; the Community Stakeholders Advisory Committee of the UC Davis Environmental Health Science Core Center; among others. Nayamin holds a Master’s Degree in both Public Health and Sociology.

 

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Margarita Cόrdova

Vice President, Zapoteca-Fresno

Margarita Cordova is from Ayoquezco de Aldama, Zimatlan De Álvarez, Oaxaca. She first came to the United States when she was just 11 years old. Margarita considers herself someone who fights against injustice. When she was younger, she would coordinate marches, and she also became president of Union Latina, an organization involved with preserving language, culture and civil rights. She felt that by learning about human rights it would not only benefit her but also her community. She also became aware that in many school districts, schools did not put any priority on helping undocumented students. She has spoken in front of 15,000 people and addressed the challenges immigrant people go through regarding labor rights. Today, she has been part of the board of directors for around 15 years. This is where she was able to learn more about her culture and what it means to be Oaxaqueno. Margarita became interested in being part of the board because she was motivated on fighting for human rights. She is currently working on starting her own business and enjoys exercising and going into nature. She also loves to travel to Oaxaca.

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Chris Schneider

Treasurer, White-Fresno

Retired Fresno attorney Chris Schneider has collaborated with CDBIO since its inception in 1993 on various projects and campaigns. During his professional career,  he worked with the United Farm Workers of America, starting in 1973, where he earned his license to practice law by participating in a legal apprenticeship program in lieu of law school. He later worked with California Rural Legal Assistance in Delano and Madera.  He then served as the Executive Director of Central California Legal Services from 1993 until 2015. He retired from the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board in December 2021 where he served as Visalia Regional Director for five years.

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Gaspar Rivera-Salgado Ph.D.

Secretary, Mixteco-Los Angeles

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado is a Mixteco migrant from Santa Cruz Rancho Viejo, Tecomaxtlahuaca , Oaxaca.  He is currently Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center, and the Director of the Center for Mexican Studies, and core faculty in the UCLA Labor Studies program. He has previously held positions at several universities in the United States and was named the 2004-2005 Prince Claus Chair in Development and Human Rights at the University of Utrecht, in the Netherlands. He currently serves as an advisor to several migrant organizations in California and Mexico, including the Fresno-based Binational Center for Oaxacan Indigenous Development, and the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations. He has extensive experience as an independent consultant on transnational migration, race and ethnic relations and diversity trainings for large organizations. He was appointed by Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2014-2017 as Vice-President of the Human Relations Commission for the City of Los Angeles.

 

Among his publications include (with T. Higbie) “The Border at Work: Undocumented Workers, the ILGWU in Los Angeles, and the Limits of Labor Citizenship.” Labor: Studies in Working Class History (forthcoming); (with S. Camacho) “Lost in Translation en el Fil: Actualizing Cultural Humility for Indigenous Mexican Farmworkers in California.” Latino Studies Journal, Volume 19 Issues 4: (2020); (with L. Escala Rabadán) “Asociaciones de inmigrantes, reproducción cultural y agencia entre inmigrantes mexicanos indígenas en Estados Unidos.” Migraciones. Publicación Del Instituto Universitario De Estudios Sobre Migraciones, (48), 161-186 (2020); (with J. Fox) “Mexican Migrant Civil Society: Propositions for Discussion.” In Accountability Across Borders: Migrant Rights in North America, edited by X. Bada and S. Gleeson. Univ. of Texas Press (2019); the volume (with E. Telles and M. Sawyer) Just Neighbors?: Research on African American and Latino Relations in the United States (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2011); and the volume  (with J. Fox) Indigenous Mexican Migration in the United States (University of California, San Diego, 2005).

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Seth Holmes

White-Berkeley

Seth M. Holmes, PhD, MD, is Chancellor's Professor in the UC Berkeley Division of Society and Environment, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management.  He is Co-Chair of the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine and Co-Director of the MD/PhD Track in Medical Anthropology coordinated between UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco.  A cultural and medical anthropologist and physician, he has conducted collaborative research on social hierarchies, health inequities, and the ways in which such asymmetries are naturalized, normalized, and resisted in the context of transnational im/migration, agro-food systems, and health care.  Holmes has worked with Indigenous Oaxacan farmworkers in California, Oregon and Washington State on collaborative projects focused on labor, health and the COVID pandemic specifically.  This work, including the book Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (2023), has received national and international awards from the fields of anthropology, sociology, and geography, including the Margaret Mead Award. In addition to academic publications, he has written for popular media such as The Huffington Post  and Salon.com  and spoken on NPR, PRI, Pacifica Radio and Radio Bilingüe radio programs. 

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Eulalio Ruíz

Mixteco-Livingston

Eulalio is from the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, from the community of Iturbide Chalcatongo, Tlaxiaco. He is an active member and volunteer of the Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB). In 2001, he was elected to be treasurer for CBDIO, and today he is a board of directors. Eulalio is a resident of Livingston, California. Currently, his job occupation is truck driver.

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Jorge Ramirez - Lopez

Mixteco-Triqui, Ventura

Jorge Ramirez-Lopez, Ph.D., is Triqui (see xánh a) and Putleco. His family and roots are from the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, Mexico. He is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the American Indian Studies Center at UCLA. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows and the Department of Latin American, Latinx, and Caribbean Studies at Dartmouth College. In 2021, he received his Ph.D. in US history from the University of California, San Diego. He writes about transnational social movements, race and Indigeneity, migration, and labor between the United States and Mexico. He is at work on a book project about the lives of Indigenous migrants from Oaxaca in the late twentieth century and their grassroots cross-border activism. Among his publications include “Our Dark Hands and Sore Backs: The Comité Cívico Popular Mixteco and the New Grassroots Activism by Indigenous Mexican Migrants,” The Journal of American Ethnic History 43, no. 2 (2024) and several others in Aztlán: A Journal of Chicano Studies, Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative and Relational Ethnic Studies, The National Review of Black Politics, and the Radical History Review. Moreover, he conducts public history workshops and has worked as a research consultant on various projects, including Fresno’s Art Exhibit “Boom Oaxaca: Conversaciones de Campo a Campo” and a national project on farmworker mobility amid COVID-19.

Finally, he is a member of the board of directors for the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities (CBDIO) in the Central Valley and an advisor for the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations (FIOB) in California.

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