Editor’s note: The following profile is from the 2023 Packer 25, our annual tribute to 25 leaders, innovators and agents of change across the fresh produce supply chain. (You can view all honorees here.) This feature has been edited for length and clarity.
Lupe Gonzalo — Senior staff member and leader, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
Lupe Gonzalo is a senior staff member and leader of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. She has worked in the agricultural fields of the U.S. for the last 12 years as a migrant farmworker, including in the harvesting of tomatoes, citrus, peppers and many other vegetables and fruits.
As part of the Fair Food Program education team, Gonzalo and her colleagues conduct workers’ rights education in seven states along the East Coast throughout the year. Gonzalo also was a member of the CIW team working with Futures Without Violence, which collaborated with CIW and other Fair Food Program partners on the first sexual harassment training curriculum for the agricultural sector in the U.S.
Drawing on her experience with the Fair Food Program, Gonzalo has helped to train, mentor and educate workers from other regions and industries on the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility model, assisting in those workers’ efforts to combat human rights abuses throughout the U.S. and the globe.
Gonzalo’s work at the CIW includes hosting daily radio shows on the CIW’s low-power community FM radio station, leading the weekly women’s group meetings, receiving complaints of abuses in the fields and managing wage-theft claims.
Gonzalo also represents the CIW at a national level, speaking publicly on the challenges faced by farmworkers in Florida, both during major actions with thousands of consumers and in dozens of presentations throughout the year. She was recently featured on CNN Freedom Project’s recent series on the Fair Food Program, quoted in Fast Company coverage and was named a Community Trailblazer by the Equal Voice magazine.
