Ernesto Cortes
Ernesto Cortés Jr. is the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) co-chair and executive director of the West / Southwest IAF regional network. The IAF provides leadership training and civics education to poor and moderate-income people across the US and UK. Cortés has been instrumental in the building of over 30 grassroots organizations known for developing and training community leaders. Career After attending an IAF training in Chicago and organizing in Wisconsin and Indiana in the early 1970s, Cortés returned to his hometown of San Antonio in 1974 to found Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS), the nationally recognized church-based grassroots organization of San Antonio's west and south side communities. This work has since expanded to include broad-based organizing projects across ten Southwestern states including Texas, California, Nevada, Arizona, Louisiana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Mississippi. These organizations' diverse faith institutions are joined by schools, labor and professional associations, and non-profits. These organizations leveraged billions of dollars for poorer communities including $700 million in infrastructure improvements in the colonias (areas of Texas which lacked basic drainage systems) during the late 1980s and early 1990s, $2.8 billion in increased public funding to equalize school funding in Texas in the mid-1980s, and $10