Vera Institute of Justice

Hortencia Rodriguez was a senior program associate with the Center on Immigration and Justice. She supported the national Unaccompanied Children Program (UCP) and California’s Unaccompanied Minors Technical Assistance (UMTA) network. She is from San Juan, Puerto Rico and has a background in program evaluation and child welfare. Prior to joining Vera, Hortencia worked as a research assistant at MDRC, conducting technical assistance and qualitative and quantitative research to study innovative anti-poverty initiatives across the United States. As a family advocate at the Center for Family Representation, she worked closely with attorneys and parent advocates to offer out-of-court advocacy to parents who had neglect and abuse petitions filed against them in the Manhattan Family Court. She graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in anthropology and the University of California, Berkeley with a MPP/MA in international and area studies.