Participants

Manolo Gonzalez-Estay

Manolo González-Estay has lived in New Jersey for the past couple years.  Previously he lived in Denver, CO for around twelve years.  Born in California with parents from Chile he earned his undergraduate degrees from the University of California Santa Barbara, BA in Anthropology and Spanish Literature, his MA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California Riverside.  He has worked as Campaign Manager, Communications Director, and Political Director on several local, statewide and national campaigns.  He has successfully managed three Colorado statewide initiative campaigns (No on 31 (to help preserve Bilingual education in Colorado) in 2002, and Yes on 37 (pass renewable energy in Colorado) in 2004, No on 47 (to defeat a Right to Work initiative in Colorado) in 2008), as well as managed a couple Denver City Council races.  He has managed and served as a political consultant for many of the Denver Public School board members achieve success. He served as the Political Director for the Denver Citywide election for Mayor Hickenlooper’s Denver Justice Center Campaign.  He served as a political consultant for Ed Perlmutter who ran for US Congress (Colorado Dist 7).  He also was a paid consultant in 2007-08 on Obama for America and served on the communications team and Latino Outreach in Colorado.  A highlight of his political work on the Obama campaign was the pleasure of teaching Spanish to President Obama for his first Spanish Language commercial.  He wears several "hats" in the community.  He is academically trained as a social/cultural anthropologist that he has used in all aspects of life and work.  He also serves as a public involvement and public relations transportation consultant.  Currently he works for the National Transit Institute at Rutgers University as the Program Development Specialist.  National Transit Institute is a federally funded institute that provides educational trainings as well as serves as a clearing house for information for national transit agencies.  He has served as the Public Involvement Manager of the RTD FasTracks North Metro Corridor EIS.  Throughout the year he serves as a national political trainer for various groups such as Wellstone Action Center for Progressive Leadership, White House Project, and others.  He also taught (Political Science Research Methods) as an honorarium instructor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Colorado at Denver.  His interests are in assisting and empowering disenfranchised communities of color with their struggles (political, social, economic, educational, labor, transportation, and environmental).