Anna Castro Email & Phone Number

Melding my extensive background in strategic communications and narrative shift work in the migrant freedom and trans liberation movement with experience building programs and campaigns rooted in pro-Black solidarity strategies, I have designed the strategy and will implement the programming of the Trans Agenda for Liberation Narrative Lab. At the TA4L Narrative Lab, I will lead a team and together we will:Build a talent and training pipeline for transgender, non-binary, and gender expansive communications and narrative strategists prioritizing Black, Indigenous and people of color leaders.Weave the field and policy expertise of local and national trans-led organizations through convening and collaborating on innovative messaging research guided by narrative power mapping and analysis.Experiment innovative ways to implement gender expansive and field-tested narratives using the Race Class Gender Framework as a starting point.Document and experiment exerting coordinated narrative power by engaging in mass culture, mass media, and mass movement focused strategies.

I partner with organizations and campaigns that are looking to mission shift from serving impacted communities to creating transformational change alongside communities. Together, we build smart, culturally competent, and trauma-informed communications strategies to give impacted communities more than a voice - we work towards restoring power and developing leaders. My background is in the immigrant justice movement and grassroots civic engagement. I make it a point to anticipate challenges and think beyond short-term political wins to effect long-term legislative and cultural change.

Through my work at Building Movement Project, I strengthen the connective tissue between organizations and movements by developing programs, delivering trainings, writing blogs, and hosting podcast episodes that focus on solidarity as a value and strategy. I've loved working with youth through the Power Up Internship Program and connecting with organizers and activists through SolidarityIs trainings on principles of transformative solidarity and the social change ecosystem.

Throughout my time with TLC, starting as a consultant and eventually co-leading the communications department while we searched for a new director, I was able to lean into my immigrant rights background and by working with several visionary abolitionist immigrant rights organizations, including Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project and Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, consistently raise up demands to #EndTransDetention and find #JusticeforRoxsanaHernandez. Supporting the development and launch of the Trans Agenda for Liberation is a career highlight, as was joining the calls to #DefundthePolice by coordinating a trans-led/LGBTQ organizational sign-on letter campaign and two-day teach in for LGBTQ organizations looking to deepen their commitment to anti-racist practices and Black communities.

Greater Los Angeles Area

Compelled by the rising anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiment I witnessed in San Diego, I chose to jump into the 2016 Presidential Election in the heat of the campaign. I designed and implemented traditional media and social media campaigns in AZ, CA, CO, FL, NV, and TX to promote naturalization, voter engagement, and community education on six core issue areas: immigration, healthcare, worker’s rights, voting rights, environment, and education.Post-election, I have provided leadership and guidance in a number of communicator coalitions, including the Alliance4Citizenship. My role as a communications director involves marrying the work of the field and communications and cultivating relationships with coalition partners on the immigration reform movement and voting rights advocates with an eye towards designing innovative campaigns that lift the experience of Latinos in the U.S.

For over a year, I led the binational U.S. - Mexico outreach campaign for Lopez-Venegas v. Johnson, a settlement that allowed certain unjustly deported Mexican nationals to return to the U.S. The project included branding the ACLU in Mexico, building organizational partnerships, creating print and online resources, designing a new website, hosting events to find potential class members, and working with the litigation team to fine tune our legal intake system. In this role, I became an integral part of the rapid response team. I worked with our legal, policy, and organizing team to counter anti-immigrant sentiment in Escondido during the Central American refugee crisis in September 2014, and again to counter the growing anti-refugee and anti-Muslim sentiment in December 2015. I also designed the ACLU’s media strategy for a letter to the DOJ, demanding an investigation into the treatment of people with mental disabilities at the hands of the San Diego Police Department.

I supported a team of three attorneys working on NVRA compliance throughout California by drafting education materials and designing our outreach strategy to ensure members of the local San Diego community knew and understood their rights. The Voting Rights team chose me to represent the ACLU of CA Voting Rights Project at convenings, and to act as the Spanish media spokesperson for the ACLU of CA Voting Rights Project, the ACLU of California, and ACLU of San Diego & Imperial Counties, significantly broadening relationships with Southern California’s Spanish-language media groups.

Greater Los Angeles Area