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XOCHITL ESPINOSA
Executive Director
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Xochitl Espinosa is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Co-op Ed Center whose purpose is to provide training and technical assistance to worker cooperative startups. She also serves as a Commissioner of the Cook County Commission on Social Innovation. Previously, she was the Cooperative Project Manager/Developer at Telpochcalli Community Education Project where she organized and trained a group of immigrant women who founded “Las Luciernagas”, a food catering cooperative project. During this period, she received training from the Center for Workplace Democracy on the worker-owner enterprise model, including its principles and values. Additionally, she was a Worker Cooperative Developer Fellow at Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) where she expanded her knowledge on cooperative development planning and strategic orientation, learned from best-practice examples of scaled cooperative development projects, acquired practical tools, and built relationships with colleagues in the field.
Over the span of her career, she has been involved with several immigrant rights organizations. Most recently, Xochitl worked as the Program and Operations Manager for the National Alliance of Latin America and Caribbean Communities (NALACC), currently known as Alianza Americas. She also served in the Peace Corps as a small business development volunteer working with artisan women and high school students in Benin, West Africa. Xochitl has an advanced degree in international public service from DePaul University and a diploma in popular education training from Universidad Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, in Lima, Peru; she has practical knowledge of key issues relating to community empowerment and economic development, organizing and policy advocacy. |