Meet Our Team

Matt Nelson is the Colombian-born, Midwestern-raised Executive Director. Before his work at Presente, he was the Organizing Director at Color Of Change. Matt also co-founded several worker-owned cooperatives in multiple Midwestern cities. He is a seasoned campaign strategist who has won dozens of local and national campaigns, and a skilled community organizer who has trained thousands of activists. Matt was featured in the first major book on the Ferguson Uprising, “Ferguson is America: Roots of Rebellion” (2015). He contributed to the book, “Welcome to the Revolution: Universalizing Resistance for Social Justice and Democracy in Perilous Times” (Routledge 2017), co-edited the book: “Turnout! Mobilizing Voters in an Emergency” (Routledge 2020) EmergencyElection.org, a contributor to the book, “If We Want to Win” (The New Press 2021), and he is finishing a new book on how Latinx organizing and cultural power is reshaping U.S. politics (Routledge 2024).

Nancy Treviño is a community organizer, trainer, and campaign strategist from Miami, FL. Previously, Nancy worked alongside dozens of grassroots community organizations across the U.S., collaborated with national and international human rights organizations, and continues providing strategic organizing, digital, and communications support to advance social justice movements. She has trained dozens of activists across the country and has won multiple local and national human rights campaigns, and is a contributor to the book, “Turnout! Mobilizing Voters in an Emergency.”

Erick Garcia joined Presente a year after he graduated from Arizona State University with a Bachelors in Computer Science in 2011. After becoming DACAmented he chose to stay in the online organizing community because he believes that significant change comes from our communities and its potential to overcome adversities. He serves as Presente’s Senior Technologist and makes sure that Presente has the ability to execute and measure strategic goals set by its leadership. Erick was a 2019 Voqal Foundation fellow. He participated in the New Organizing Institute (2014) digital organizing Bootcamp where his team took first place, as well as the Forward DREAMer Hackathon (2013) where his team took first place in the storytelling category. As the senior technologist, he is helping upgrade digital and translocal organizing infrastructure, aimed at engaging and building leadership and participation of Latinx and immigrant communities.

Reetu Mody is an adventure seeker, dancer, writer, and activist. She was a former public defender in Nashville, Tennessee, as a Gideon’s Promise Fellow. She received a Master of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government as well as a Juris Doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Boalt Hall), where she was awarded the Francine Diaz Award for Social Justice. Prior to graduate school Reetu was a community educator and organizer for a domestic violence agency, developing a prototype statewide curriculum on violence for California youth. As a community organizer in Richmond, California, Reetu fought alongside predominantly girls and boys of color who were pursued by the criminal justice system. Reetu has advocated, organized, facilitated conversations, and written articles about the intersection of racial, economic, criminal, and immigration rights.

Max Rameau is a Haitian born Pan-African theorist, campaign strategist, organizer and author.

While a student in the Washington, DC area, Max was introduced to Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist theory. After moving to Miami, Florida in 1991, he began organizing around a broad range of human rights issues impacting low-income Black communities, including Immigrant rights (particularly Haitian immigrants), economic justice, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, particularly for ex-felons and police abuse, among others.