Bio
Esmeralda “Esmé” Quintero-Cubillan (they/she), a former inaugural Pauli Murray Fellow, worked within the ACLU’s Affiliate Support & Nationwide Initiatives (ASNI) department in the Program & Strategy Team. Esmé worked at the intersection of gender, immigration, and Indigeneity, supporting a variety of projects such as the Southern Collective, Indigenous Justice, community building, and youth political education. They engage in project coordination, program development, and cross-department collaboration to empower ACLU affiliates’ ability to achieve their missions.
Esmé joined the ACLU after graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). During their time at UCSB, Esmé concurrently served as the President of the University of California Student Association and External Vice President for Statewide Affairs, representing over 285,000 students to the State and Federal government.
During her tenure, Esmé created the first environmental justice campaign, successfully lobbied the state for $30 million in direct funding for marginalized students and founded a Queer & Trans BIPOC Emergency Fund which distributed $30,000 in grants to QTBIPOC across the country during the height of the pandemic.
At her core, Esmé believes that each generation has a duty to lay the groundwork for the next seven generations. They hope to continue to work in public interest, share knowledge, inspire hope, and co-create a world of possibility, joy, and kindness in honor of the ancestors who have come before us.