A cherished member and Latino leader in the Longmont community, Nino Gallo, continues to inspire another generation of change-makers through an award offered in his name.
Nino Gallo was an immigrant who worked extensively in areas of education, economic development, civic participation and community impact, both within and outside Boulder County. But most of all, his work always included a measure of immigrant advocacy.
After his death in Dec. 2020, due to COVID-19, Boulder County residents felt that something had to be done to honor Gallo’s life of dedicated leadership and service to the community.
“Nino was such an amazing leader in the community; he was very respected and beloved,” said Elvira Ramos from the Leadership Fellows program at the Community Foundation Boulder County, or CFBC. “So when he passed, everyone was on Facebook saying ‘we need to do something, how do we honor this man?’"
On August 17, nearly nine months after Gallo’s death, Angela Maria Ortiz Roa became the first recipient of the Nino Gallo Leadership Award — established to honor Boulder County residents who are either immigrants or descendants of immigrants. In order to receive the award, the recipient must also engage in innovative work on behalf of immigrants, support for the economically-disadvantaged, influence on community engagement efforts and impact on local programs and policies, according to the CFBC website.
A Columbian native, Ortiz Roa immigrated to Colorado in 2001 and quickly became involved in cultural awareness issues and language access opportunities, she said. Some of her early work was with The GrowHaus in Denver — a non-profit food access program — and Cultivando in Commerce City — a Latinx non-profit organization that addresses poor air quality in various communities.
In 2016, Ortiz Roa joined the Foundations for Leaders Organizing Water and Sustainability, or FLOWS. Today, she assumes the foundations’ coordinator position.
According to a CFBC press release, “Angela was nominated (for the Nino Gallo Leadership Award) in part for helping to expand environmental awareness and Latino leadership in the Boulder community through her work with FLOWS at University of Colorado Boulder.”
A new project within FLOWS is an effort to partner with the city of Longmont to develop Sustainable Opportunities, Lifestyles and Leadership, or SOLL, a program that mirrors the work of FLOWS, Ortiz Roa said.
In addition to her work with FLOWS, Ortiz Roa recently created Somos Resilientes, a series of educational programs to highlight the sustainability work done by members of the BIPOC, low-income and LGBTQ communities in Boulder County — “work that often goes unrecognized by more dominant, sustainable areas of the city,” Roa said.
For Ortiz Roa, receiving the award was an emotional experience as she had known Gallo during his life and participated in programs that Gallo helped create and manage, including the Personal Investment Enterprise, or PIE, whose services recently helped Ortiz Roa receive her degree from Metropolitan State University.
“It is a huge honor and a great responsibility to be the first recipient of this award,” Ortiz Roa said. “It is a reminder of the importance of the work the immigrant community leads. It feels like a way for me to recommit to the work that I do not only with FLOWS, but also in raising my child as the son of an immigrant, and when interacting with other communities to elevate and celebrate the richness of diversity.”
