Staff
Jacob Cortes - Senior Organizer
Office: 713.807.1429 Email: jcortes@tmohouston.net
Born in Houston, Texas, Jacob grew up in Austin, Texas and graduated from Lyndon Baines Johnson Science Academy, a magnet program that is part of the Austin Independent School District. He then attended Swarthmore College and studied Political Science and History. After graduating Swarthmore in 2005, he worked on a special project with the Pima County Interfaith Council, an affiliate of the IAF in Tucson, Arizona. The project was part of a successful campaign to restore city funding to programs for children and youth in Metro Tucson. In 2006, Jacob began as an organizer for the Service Employees International Union and was part of a successful campaign to unionize 6,000 Pima County employees under the SEIU. In 2007, he returned to work as an organizer for the Pima County Interfaith Council and helped organiz further public support for expanded investments in job training, after school programs and dropout prevention strategies. In 2009, Jacob joined the staff of The Metropolitan Organization (TMO) and began organizing in inner city congregations around needed increases in public infrastructure investments, after school programs, comprehensive immigration reform and the launch of Capital IDEA Houston, an extension of Capital IDEA which is one of the most successful job training strategies in the U.S. Jacob has two sisters, Ami and Alma and parents Oralia and Ernesto.
Kathryn Fine - Organizer
Office: 713.807.1429 Email: kfine@tmohouston.net
Katie was born and raised in Dallas, Texas along with her older sister, younger sister and younger brother. She attended elementary and middle school in Forth Worth and attended Plano West High School in Plano, Texas. She attended Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas where she graduated in 2009 with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Spanish. While in college she studied abroad in Seville, Spain where she took courses on the Sociology of Spain, organized for Working America, an organization that canvasses and organizes individuals around important issues such as healthcare and education, and did an internship at the National Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C. where she worked on business advocacy. Her last semester at Trinity University she did an internship with Citizens Organizing for Public Service, an affiliate of the IAF in San Antonio, Texas. She worked on many issues during her internship but focused on researching how certain types of businesses are located in San Antonio in order to target vulnurable populations such as minorities, the poor, and the undocumented. In October of 2009 Katie became a special projects organizer at The Metropolitan Organization in Houston as part of a city wide education and organizing campaign for Immigration Reform. While continuing to work on immigration issues, she will also be doing workforce organizing for TMO's new job training project Capital IDEA-Houston.
Michael Espinoza - Organizer
Office: 713.807.1429 Email: mespinoza@tmohouston.net
Michael was born and raised in Houston, Texas. Upon graduating from Milby High School in 1997, Michael attended Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology in 2002.
After completing undergrad, Mike returned to Houston where he taught high school Government, World Geography, and Chicano Studies at Raul Yzaguirre School for Success, a charter school in Southeast Houston. During his time as a high school teacher, Mike began educating and organizing students around the DREAM Act- a piece of legislation that, if passed, would grant undocumented students a path to citizenship. In 2005, Michael was named a Center for Mexican American Studies Fellow at the University of Houston, where he completed coursework to earn a master’s in Sociology.
He also served as the coordinator of Houston United, a grassroots activist coalition which has organized Houston’s massive immigrant’s rights mobilizations from 2006 to the present. In 2006, inspired by the victorious strike of 5,000 commercial office building janitors in Houston, Michael joined the staff of SEIU Local 1- Houston Justice for Janitors Campaign. There, he served as Political Director and Lead Organizer, where he helped Aramark workers win a union in Houston in 2007, led efforts to build and sustain a worker-centered healthcare clinic for the janitors in 2009, and coordinated the successful renegotiation of the janitor’s collective bargaining agreement in Houston in 2010. Michael then served as the Texas State Director for Mi Familia Vota, a non-partisan & non-profit organization committed to increasing civic engagement among Latinos, where he directed a city-wide GOTV program that targeted over 30,000 low propensity Latino voters residing in 124 precincts in Harris County during the 2010 election cycle. After attending a national training with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in the summer of 2011, Michael joined the staff of The Metropolitan Organization (TMO). Michael currently resides in Southwest Houston with his wife, Maria, and their two children, Alex and Cathy.
