Gonzalo Mercado is the Executive Director and founder of La Colmena Community Job Center and is also New York coordinator of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network. Over the last ten years, Mercado has led efforts to organize “Day Laborer Volunteer Brigades,” which helped thousands of New Yorkers impacted by Superstorm Sandy; helped to establish the NYC Council Day Laborer Workforce Initiative; and worked with immigrants from Puebla, Mexico, to reunify more than 20 families who had been separated for two decades. Most recently, he helped to establish the first worker-owned cooperative on Staten Island. gonzalo@lacolmenanyc.org