Melinda Lewis, LMSW, is the Coordinator of Special Projects at El Centro, Inc. in Kansas City, Kansas. Her educational background is in macro-level approaches to poverty eradication, with an emphasis on program design and policy analysis within Latino immigrant communities. At El Centro, Ms. Lewis has designed and taught financial literacy classes and overseen Individual Development Account, residential lending, and homebuyer education efforts. Currently, her efforts are focused on coordinating policy advocacy and leadership development efforts at El Centro and building statewide networks for progressive policy change. Ms. Lewis speaks fluent Spanish and is the author of El Centro’s qualitative and quantitative research reports about the lives of Latino immigrants in the KCK area. Prior to coming to El Centro, Ms. Lewis has worked at the Center for Social Development in St. Louis, Missouri on asset approaches to anti-poverty policy, as a political campaign organizer, and in direct social work practice with immigrant families. She is currently active in volunteer work in cross-border labor organizing and building a faith and labor coalition to support workers.