United States

Cristóbal Joshua Alex

Program Officer New York

Cristóbal Alex works on increasing democratic participation in the United States, with an emphasis on voter registration and mobilization, voting rights and public policies. He makes grants to organizations whose work focuses on expanding the electorate, empowering underrepresented constituencies, and building a more fair and equitable political system.

Prior to joining the foundation in 2011, Cristóbal worked at the Open Society Foundations, where he was a program officer for the Democracy and Power Fund. In this role, he managed the voter engagement portfolio and supported a range of strategies to inspire public participation in underrepresented communities, develop new leaders and generate innovative solutions to address threats to democracy.

Previously, Cristóbal served as director of the National Campaign to Restore Civil Rights, where he led a coalition of more than 100 organizations to raise awareness of the civil rights rollback and worked to ensure that the courts protect and preserve justice, fairness and opportunity for everyone.

Among Cristóbal’s many achievements, he has advocated on various rights issues before the United Nations Human Rights Commission and federal and state governmental bodies. He was the youngest president in the history of the Latina/o Bar Association, bringing attention to standardized testing systems in schools that disproportionately affect people of color and leading voter registration drives. He developed the Pathways to Law mentorship program—the first-of-its-kind in the country—that pairs community college students of color with attorneys of color. He also co-founded and chaired the Latino Political Action Committee and the Farm Worker Justice Project.

Cristóbal received his J.D. from the University of Washington.