Maru Bautista emigrated from Mexico to the United States to pursue an M.A. in International Affairs. Today, she is the Co-Director of Cooperative Development at the Center for Family Life (CFL). Prior to joining CFL, she worked on development projects in rural Colombia that supported economic empowerment of local communities. For the past two years, she has been developing worker cooperatives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and supporting efforts by community-based organizations around NYC to initiate worker cooperatives. In 2015, she was a Worker Cooperative Developer Fellow at the Democracy at Work Institute. mbautista@sco.org