People
Our People
Loren Caldwell
Loren Caldwell, ISA Graduate Assistant, supports ISA events and communications. She has a B.A. in International Studies and Spanish from UNC Charlotte and is enrolled in the Global Studies Masters Program at UNC Chapel Hill. Her research interests are climate driven migration in Latin America and women-led sustainability efforts. Loren is from High Point and has lived in Cantabria, Spain.
Kassandra Ciriza-Monreal
Kassandra Ciriza-Monreal serves as a Communications Specialist and Media Assistant at ISA, supporting BIC’s translation and language access projects. She is studying Human and Organizational Leadership Development, Romance Languages with a concentration in Hispanic studies, and a minor in Spanish for the Professions at UNC-Chapel Hill. Kassandra graduated from Randolph Community College and is originally from Aguascalientes, Mexico.
Susan Clifford
Susan Clifford serves as the Language Access Coordinator for the Building Integrated Communities initiative at ISA. In this role, she prepares and facilitates a hybrid language access training course for teams of NC local governments and community partners, and supports those teams as they design and implement their assessments and language access plans. Susan completed a BA in Sociology with a minor in Spanish at the College of William & Mary and received MSW and MPH degrees at UNC-Chapel Hill. Susan has over 20 years of experience working in local government in the areas of: immigrant and refugee health, language services coordination, program development and management, and community engagement and coalition building. She was trained as a Medical Interpreter and is fluent in English and Spanish.
Hannah Gill
Hannah Gill, our Program Director is an anthropologist and oral historian with a specialization in Latin American/Caribbean migration studies. She is the author of the book, “The Latino Migration Experience in North Carolina: New Roots in the Old North State.” She received a DPhil in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford, England. She is a native of North Carolina and an alumna of UNC Chapel Hill.
919-962-5453
hgill@email.unc.edu
Brianna Gilmore
Brianna Gilmore is our Program Associate. After graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill with a degree in Latin American Studies with a double minor in Hispanic Studies and Geography, she continued creating promotional material for events, managing the ISA website, social media accounts, and the Latin American Film Library. In addition to her studies, she volunteered in Ecuador with Global Citizen Year working with indigenous peoples, and studied sustainable development with the School for Field Studies in Costa Rica. Through her work with Building Integrated Communities, she has organized and facilitated community and civic meetings with the City of Sanford’s Equity Task Force and with various stakeholders in the City of Washington, culminating in community assessments, local government recommendation reports, and policy changes. She has completed Relational Leadership training through the UNC School of Medicine, digital accessibility training with UNC’s Digital Accessibility Office, and most recently UndocuCarolina‘s ally training.
919-966-1484
briannag@live.unc.edu
Sofia Godoy
Sofia Godoy, Communication Specialist/Media Assistant, supports ISA’s communications and BIC’s partnerships in Carrboro and Marion. She is double majoring in Political Science and Exercise and Sports Science with a minor in Data Science at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is from Quito, Ecuador and lives in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and studied abroad in Barcelona, Spain.
Emily Spangenberg
Emily Spangenberg is the Bilingual Program Coordinator for the Building Integrated Communities Initiative at ISA. As Program Coordinator, Emily facilitates participatory planning processes between local governments and community partners in North Carolina. Prior to joining ISA, Emily has worked with legal services nonprofits focusing on immigration law, including conducting community outreach, supporting law students, faculty, and clients in clinical education programs, and providing Spanish/English translation and interpretation. She has also conducted sociological research on environmental health and community perceptions of mining activity in Northwestern Argentina. Emily received an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Journalism, Political Science, and Spanish from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Daniel Velásquez
Daniel Velásquez is a Ph.D Candidate in History at UNC and holds a Master’s degree in Public History from the University of Central Florida. His research interests center on the migratory and commercial links between Latin America and the US South, with an emphasis on eighteenth and nineteenth century Mexico-Louisiana-Florida connections. He has conducted archival research in the United States, Mexico, Spain, and the United Kingdom, and has been involved in numerous projects ranging from historic preservation to history podcast production. Since 2021, he also serves his local community as a member of the Mebane Racial Equity Advisory Council. As Community Documentarian at ISA, he looks forward to conducting oral histories with Latinx leaders across North Carolina and working with the Building Integrated Communities and New Roots programs.