Our Team

Mujeres de Maiz depends on our team to lead our vision and mission.

In addition, we have various committees, circles, and volunteers that make Mujeres de Maiz happen.

Our team includes healthcare advocates, holistic practitioners, professors, cultural bearers, artists, educators, and community organizers whose success lies in our unique combination of lived experience, understanding of the community, professional capabilities, academic training, and expertise in bridging traditional healing practices with contemporary women's health education. Our team has specialized knowledge in reproductive health, mental health support, traditional Indigenous medicines, and cultural wellness practices to develop impactful holistic health programs that address the physical, emotional, and mental well-being that genuinely resonate with our community.

Our staff includes a director, program coordinator, contracted artists facilitators, bookkeeper, and grant writer. A core team of MdM members support with their various skills on a multitude of projects. 

Our experience and passion for grassroots organizing, women’s health, multimedia arts, and cultural programming makes us uniquely qualified to expand our services. Our director, Felicia Montes, professor in Chicano/a Studies at Cal State Long Beach, has been with the organization since its inception and guided our steadfast commitment to grow our organization to the next level. 

We remain flexible and responsive to changes in political climates and will continue to offer healing spaces that offer coping and community.

Our team comes from the community we serve and has extensive organizational skills. This positions us perfectly for expansion. In the future, we plan to participate in leadership professional development including with the Center for Nonprofit Management to strengthen our organizational capacity. Additionally, we plan to recruit more advisors within the health fields to expand our expertise. 

MdM holds an “open door” policy to expand our partnerships and participation by inviting families to join our circle of creators, learners, funders, educators, and decision-makers. We believe that each person brings cultural wealth and knowledge which in turn builds our programs and fosters growth. From this base, we have expanded participation substantially. The key to our positive community engagement and growth is MdM’s culturally competent staff that represents the communities they serve, Latina/Indigenous, queer so that our participants see themselves reflected in our leadership and staff and join our efforts.

Felicia montes, Director

Felicia ‘Fe’ Montes is a Xicana Indigenous (Raramuri) artist, activist, community & event organizer, educator, emcee, designer, poet, performer, professor and wellness practitioner living and working in the Los Angeles area. She is known throughout the southwest as an established Xicana cultural worker of a new generation. She believes art is a tool for education, empowerment and transformation and has translated her passion for art and social justice as the cofounder and coordinating member of two groundbreaking creative women’s groups, Mujeres de Maiz and In Lak Ech, as well as the online one stop cultura shop, El MERCADO y Mas.

Felicia holds a B.A from UCLA in World Arts and Cultures with a minor in Chicana/o/x Studies, a M.A in Chicana/o/x Studies from Cal State Northridge, and an M.F.A from Otis College of Art & Design in Public Practice Art. She currently serves as the founding director of Mujeres de Maiz and is an Assistant Professor of Chicanx Latinx arts and Social Practice within the Chicana/o/x Latina/o/x Studies at Cal State Long Beach. Check her out at www.feliciamontes.com

EMaIL: felicia@mujeresdemaiz.com

Mónica Hurtado Torres, Program Coordinator

Mónica Hurtado Torres is a Queer Xicana Indígena based out of East Los Angeles. Her lived experiences along with her unwavering commitment to both her personal and community healing justice work have been catalysts for transformative change and ignited paradigm shifting movements. As an artist, healing practitioner, cultural worker and visionary leader, she serves as a conduit by fearlessly opening herself up as a portal. Mónica harnesses her own testimonio as a powerful tool for empowering others to go within and find their inner healer.

Mónica holds a Bachelor’s in Chicana(o) Studies and Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. She currently serves as the Program Coordinator for Mujeres de Maiz where she has been a part of and led efforts centered on holistic wellness, cultural preservation, and community empowerment rooted in ancestral practices and artistic expression. She is also the founder of Colectivo Cihuateotl, an autonomous community centered organization - at the heart of Mónica’s lifelong mission lies radical healing and revolutionary love as a means for our personal and collective liberation, ultimately illuminating the path towards the birthing of a new world. Learn more about her at www.monicahurtadotorres.com

EMaIL: Monie@mujeresdemaiz.com

Claudia Mercado, Documentarian

Co-founder and primary documentarian of Mujeres de Maiz, born and raised in Highland Park, Los Angeles, Claudia is an independent filmmaker currently in development of the Mujeres de Maiz documentary.  As a writer, producer, director and editor, she has exhibited her films throughout the U.S. in art houses, universities, museums, film festivals and online. She graduated from UC Berkeley with a BA in Film Studies and holds a MFA in Film, Television and Theater from Cal State University Los Angeles. She currently is a lecturer within the Chicana/o/x Latina/o/x Studies department at Cal State LA.

Maria villamil, Corazon

Maria Villamil is a Xicana Indigenous daughter of Mexican and Zapotec parents. She has been involved in community transformation and organizing since her early years alongside many community leaders and organizations across the city of Los Angeles and State for the last two decades. Her leadership on issues from school reform, race relations, community building across different communities, and organizing with marginalized youth and Indigenous families do not compare to the living, breathing, and development of human transformation through her own personal practice, self-empowerment, and community relationships with others. Her belief in social change for self-determination is why she is passionate about working with parents, leaders, and communities.

She has been pivotal in leading community-based groups of parents and communities of color to co-design organizing pedagogies, leadership training, and organizing strategy plans for charter school renewals, governance reform/policies with school leaders, teachers, and coalitions across the city and state of California. Maria balances her rigor and passion for community organizing and leadership development as a practitioner of healing arts in traditional medicine and Reiki. When she is not organizing in schools or practicing self-care, she co-creates and facilitates workshops with Mujeres de Maiz and Sunbeams Mindfulness Programs.

Megan pennings, Corazon

Megan Pennings is a Xicana educator and artist from Baldwin Park. Megan's Photography covers many styles, including portraiture, documentary, still life, and urban lifestyle. Her work intricately weaves social media, culture, and community themes while exploring the complex relationship between identity and social expression.

Megan holds a M.F.A in Photography from the Academy of Art University San Francisco, an M.A. in Mexican-American Studies, a Graduate Certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Cal State Los Angeles, and a B.A. in Mexican-American Studies and Sociology from Cal State Los Angeles, and A.A. in Social and Behavioral Sciences from Mt. San Antonio College. She is currently an Adjunct Faculty in Ethnic Studies at Chaffey College, Citrus College, Fullerton College, and Santa Ana College. She also teaches Digital Photography at South Hills High School. Outside of academia, Megan has mentored with Las Fotos Project, a nonprofit that empowers teenage girls and gender-expansive youth through Photography. Check out her work at mp.mpenningsphotography.com

nadia zepeda, Corazon

Nadia Zepeda is a Chicana interdisciplinary scholar activist from Santa Ana, CA. She’s an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o Studies at California State University, Fullerton. Nadia received her BA in Chicano/Latino Studies and Spanish from California State University, Long Beach, and her doctorate in Chicana/o and Central American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Through collaborative and community-based research, she traces the genealogy of healing justice in Chicana/x feminist organizing. Her teaching, research, and commitment to healing justice exemplify her investments in visions of transformative justice in the university and beyond. 

Our Board of Directors