Morning Session Featured Speaker
Jerry Tello
Jerry Tello is a father, grandfather, community justice advocate, healing practitioner, therapist, award-winning author, and internationally recognized authority on culturally based health and healing. For more than 50 years, he has dedicated his life to strengthening and healing individuals, families, communities, and systems through his interpretive Indigenous-based pedagogy, La Cultura Cura (Culture Heals).
Through this philosophy and its practices, Maestro Tello has reached over half a million people and trained thousands of facilitators nationwide in his curricula and teachings.
Born into a family of Mexican, Texan, and Tap Pilam Coahuiltecan roots and raised in the South Central and Compton communities of Los Angeles, Mr. Tello is regarded as an international expert in trauma and healing, sacred fatherhood, family strengthening, racial justice and racial healing, community peacebuilding, and mobilization. He is the co-founder and Elder Emeritus of the National Compadres Network, established in 1988.
Maestro Tello has authored numerous articles, videos, and culturally rooted curricula addressing generational trauma and healing-centered, trauma-informed practices. He is the award-winning author of Recovering Your Sacredness, co-editor of Family Violence and Men of Color, and creator of a bilingual children’s book series. He has also produced a series of motivational health and healing recordings.
His culturally based healing and development curricula include: El Joven Noble, Cara y Corazón, Raising Children with PRIDE, El Círculo (Circle Keeper), Amor de Padre, and the La Cultura Cura Health and Healing Philosophy.
Maestro Tello has been featured in Time, Newsweek, Latina, Lowrider, and numerous other publications, webinars, podcasts, and digital media platforms. He currently co-guides the Healing Generations Podcast.
Over the years, he has received numerous prestigious honors, including the 2024 National Latino Behavioral Health Lifetime Legacy Award; the NCPL Fatherhood and Family Pioneer Award for over 40 years of advancing positive fatherhood; the 2023 Lifetime Children’s Advocate Award; Maria Shriver’s Annual Advocate for Change Award; the White House Champions of Change Award; the Presidential Crime Victims Service Award presented by President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno; two California Governor’s Awards; and the Rotary International Ambassador of Peace Award.
Together with Susanna Armijo, Maestro Tello co-guides the Sacred Circles Center in Whittier, California, where they hold space for teachings, practices, and ceremonies grounded in Indigenous healing ways of life. Along with their large extended family, they are the proud parents of five children and seven grandchildren.
Afternoon Session Featured Speaker
Luz Gallegos
Luz Gallegos is the executive director of TODEC Legal Center, a community-based organization providing legal, civic, educational, and humanitarian services to immigrant and migrant-worker families throughout the Inland Empire and Coachella Valley.
Born and raised in the Inland Empire, Gallegos began her journey “en la causa, el movimiento” as a young child, guided by her parents and inspired by legendary labor and civil rights leaders Bert Corona, Soledad “Chole” Alatorre, and César E. Chávez. Her early involvement in community organizing shaped a lifelong commitment to social justice and to empowering historically marginalized communities. Over the course of her career, she has led hundreds of programs and campaigns advancing immigrant rights, civic engagement, educational access, and community well-being. She has also mentored hundreds of young people, encouraging them to pursue higher education while remaining deeply connected to their families, communities, and cultural roots.
Through her leadership at TODEC, Gallegos continues her family’s legacy of service and advocacy. She has helped mobilize critical support for mixed-status families confronting intensified immigration enforcement, family separation, economic insecurity, and barriers to employment, education, healthcare, and food assistance. Under her leadership, TODEC has connected families with legal representation, food, mental-health resources, and other essential services, while distributing more than 2.5 million Red Cards to help community members understand and assert their constitutional rights.
Gallegos is a powerful advocate for documenting civil rights violations, expanding accessible mental-health services, and strengthening civic participation. At the heart of her work is an unwavering belief in the transformative power of community action, faith, compassion, and solidarity. In times of fear and uncertainty, she reminds communities that love and hope remain essential tools for collective healing, resilience, and justice.