JovannaGarcia Soto

Jovanna Garcia Soto is Program Director at Grassroots International. She provides leadership to the Program Team and works to build and maintain long-term relationships with partner and ally organizations led by Indigenous Peoples, Afrodescendants, peasants, women, and youth.

Before assuming her current role, Jovanna led Grassroots International’s Latin America program for more than a decade. As Senior Solidarity Program Officer for Latin America, she accompanied social movements in Latin America working to dismantle systems of oppression and build collective alternatives to advance the human rights to land, water, and food. She also supported the building of transnational solidarity across organizations and movements throughout the region and beyond.

Prior to joining Grassroots International, Jovanna worked to advance environmental justice in communities of color. Jovanna is trilingual in Spanish (her mother tongue), Portuguese, and English. She is originally from Puerto Rico and was involved with the student movement for ending the US military occupation of Vieques and with the environmental justice and decolonization movements in Puerto Rico. She has also spent some time working with riverine communities in the Amazonian region of Brazil.