STAFF
Salvador Longoria
Executive Director
A native of Cuba, Salvador is a graduate of Loyola University’s School of Arts and Sciences and Loyola College of Law in New Orleans and has practiced law in both firm settings and as a solo practitioner. He served on the Loyola University President’s Council, and also served on the Loyola University Alumni Association Board of Directors and served as its President. In 2009, he was awarded the Adjutor Hominum Award as a distinguished graduate of Loyola University. In 2013, he was awarded the Maclavio Barraza Award for Leadership by the National Council of La Raza, and in 2016 he was honored by Hispanics in Philanthropy with a HIPGIVER Award. He has also contributed numerous hours and efforts to many organizations and charities and has served on committees/boards for the Volunteers of America, the United Way, Second Harvest Food Bank and the Metropolitan Area Committee. He served on the Board of the New Orleans Pro Bono Project and has done general legal and pro bono work including work with prisoners and immigration
detainees for many years. In 1997 Salvador was chosen as one of “40 under 40” people to watch by Gambit Weekly magazine and as Outstanding Young Lawyer for 1991 by the Louisiana State Bar Association’s Young Lawyer Section. In 1990 he was featured as one of twenty outstanding young lawyers in the nation by the American Bar Association. He served as a supervising attorney for Tulane Law School’s Cuban Detainee Clinical Project and was an Appointee on the Louisiana State Advisory Committee, United States Commission on Civil Rights. He is a past board member of Catholic Charities, Archdiocese of New Orleans, and a past Advisory Board Member and President of the Hispanic Apostolate, Archdiocese of New Orleans. He was inducted into the Order of St. Louis of the Archdiocese in 2010. He previously served as an appointee to the Louisiana Pan American Commission, and presently serves on the Louisiana Governor’s Latino Commission. Mr. Longoria was also an appointee and served as chairperson for the United States Department of Commerce Advisory Committee on the Hispanic Population. More recently, he was appointed a Commissioner of the Board of Commissioners of the Regional Transit Authority of New Orleans and served as the Commission’s Chairperson until 2016. He has served on the Community Advisory Board for Entergy New Orleans, the board of Esperanza Charter School and the advisory board of the Jesuit Social Research Institute. At present, Mr. Longoria serves as Executive Director of Puentes New Orleans. He had previously been on the advisory board of Puentes and served as board Chairperson until 2017. He is also a member of the regional advisory board of the Anti-Defamation League and a member of Voces Unidas, a group in service to the immigrant detainee population in Louisiana
Ashley graduated from the University of Puerto Rico, where she earned a bachelor's in Political Science and Literature. She has an M.A. from the University of Connecticut where she majored in Latino, Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Her research focuses on grassroots organizing around coloniality and disaster capitalism. She's worked as a teaching and research assistant as well as a Co-Teacher for El Instituto of Latino Studies. Before coming to Puentes, Ashley was working as a Disaster Case Manager, aiding survivors of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
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Gabrielle García Steib holds a B.A. from Loyola University of New Orleans in English and Digital Media, and a certificate in Spanish from the Autonomous University of México (UNAM). She is from New Orleans and has spent the past few years dividing her time between here, Nicaragua, and México. She has primarily worked in education and art-- as an ELL educator for 3 years as well as exhibiting her work in museums such as NOMA and the CAC. In 2017, she started the first and only bilingual column in Antigravity Magazine, about and for Latinxs in New Orleans. In 2018 she received the D.A.L.E. fellowship from Our Voice Nuestra Voz in which she co-designed a project that provided trauma-informed workshops for her immigrant students as well as culturally relevant material for them. Most recently she has participated in residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center, as well as Antenna’s Paper Machine Residency in which she created her first photobook about Latin American migration in New Orleans. In October of 2019, among 500 applicants, she was invited with 49 other cultural innovators and change-makers who work in community and arts to participate in a global seminar in Austria.
Jenn holds a Masters Degree in Social Work from Loyola University Chicago. Her work focuses on migration, trauma testimonies, and participatory media. Jenn is both a social worker and a filmmaker interested in using narrative intervention for healing through meaning-making surrounding traumatic events, institutional violence, marginalization and discrimination. Jenn has worked in the non-profit arena for 10 years developing culturally sensitive programs and policies for immigrants and communities of color. This included community organizing with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, and fostering cultural resilience through documentary filmmaking with indigenous youth in Guatemala.
Kenneth Routon, Ph.D.
Director of Research, Grants & Programs
Kenneth holds a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology. Before joining Puentes in 2014, he taught at several universities around the country and published extensively. His primary responsibilities include research & development, grants management, grant writing & reporting, program design & evaluation.