Julie Schwietert Collazo

Co-Founder and Executive Director of Immigrant Families Together & Author of "Rosy: A Mother's Story of Separation at the Border"

Travels From Travels From:
New York, NY, USA
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Julie Schwietert Collazo Biography

Julie Schwietert Collazo is the co-founder and executive director of Immigrant Families Together (IFT), a non-profit organization founded in response to the zero tolerance policy that resulted in the separation of thousands of immigrant parents and their children at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018. She brings her background as a bilingual journalist and former social worker and creative arts therapist to bear on her work with IFT, which raised more than a million dollars in just over six months and has raised more than three million to date, posting bond for 130 detained parents, grandparents, and older siblings who were separated from children. The ongoing work of IFT involves providing support to these families-housing, legal counsel, medical-dental-mental health care, and other necessities, as they proceed with their immigration cases, and to provide material and logistical support to border partners and to individuals currently in detention centers. Her work with IFT has been recognized by the New York State Senate and has been entered into the U.S. Congressional Record by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She was named one of FWD.US's 2019 Keeping Families Together champions and received Emory University's 2021 Women of Excellence Award and the university’s 2023 Alumni of Promise Award. She is co-author of The Book of "Rosy: A Mother's Story of Separation at the Border", which was published in English and Spanish by HarperOne and HarperCollins Español in June 2020, and was named by Kirkus as one of the best non-fiction books of 2020. She is the subject of the documentary "Split at the Root", named a critic’s pick by The New York Times and now streaming on Netflix.

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Speaker profile last updated by AAE Talent Team on 10/30/2024.

Julie Schwietert Collazo Speaking Topics

  • Tapping into Your Personal Power: How “Ordinary” People Can Ignite and Nurture Extraordinary Change

    As photos and videos of asylum-seeking children separated from their families began to be dispersed by mainstream media in the summer of 2018, former social worker Julie Schwietert Collazo asked herself, “What can I do?”. After hearing the attorney for one migrant mother explain on the radio that the mother could be reunited with her children if she could pay her immigration bond, Julie and her husband, an Afro-Cuban refugee, launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised the bond money – and more – in less than 12 hours and more than $1 million in six months.

    What started as an effort to reunite one mother with her three children became a movement that, five years later, has resulted in more than $3 million raised, 130 parents and guardians reunited with their children, and hundreds of asylum seekers supported through border and detention intervention programs – all achieved by mobilizing "ordinary" people and resources to ignite and nurture extraordinary change.

    In this talk, Julie will share the story of Immigrant Families Together and how its journey and the lessons she’s learned can be appropriated and replicated to achieve profound, meaningful change in a variety of contexts. By claiming our personal power and exercising our resources – however limited we may think these are – we can mobilize our communities to solve problems and create environments for collective flourishing.

  • The Revolution Will be Joyful: How to Create Lasting Social Movements Rooted in Joy

    Julie Schwietert Collazo co-founded the nonprofit Immigrant Families Together with her husband in 2018 as a response to the zero-tolerance policy that separated thousands of asylum• seeking families at the Mexico-U.S. border. She admits that the organization was created out of anger and frustration – and five years later, she’s still angry. But she also admits that while anger can be a potent tool, it may not be the most effective one for drawing people into a movement – much less convincing them to stick around for the long-haul, weather struggle together, and continually recommit to hard, often-frustrating work.

    In this talk, which is designed for activist groups, nonprofit leaders, and other community builders, Julie will share experiences of leading her organization through anger toward joy, and will offer tested strategies to inspire groups to assess their own organizations’ emotional tenor – and how to retune if needed.

  • We Don’t Have to Do This The Way We’ve Always Done It

    How Nonprofits and Can Create Radical and Powerful New Models for Philanthropy and Public Participation. As a young social worker and assistant director of a New York City social service organization, Julie Schwietert Collazo quickly became disillusioned with the dominant model of nonprofits. From one agency to another, she saw the ways in which incredibly talented staff were constrained in their abilities to do their best work; how development teams traded stories of clients’ pain for donations (and never leveraged interested members of the public in other ways) and attached themselves to metrics of scale; and how clients were impacted negatively by the philosophy of scarcity that clouds the vision of so many nonprofits.

    It took 15 years away from social work – during which time she became a journalist and lived outside the U.S. – to come back to nonprofit development with fresh eyes, new ideas, and the will to test out a more inclusive, abundance-driven model of nonprofit development. In this talk, designed for both nonprofit leaders and funders, she will walk the audience through this shift in mindset and practice, and explain the power of public participation in philanthropic community building and problem solving, using the example of Immigrant Families Together, a nonprofit she co-founded with her husband in 2018.

Julie Schwietert Collazo Videos

  • SPLIT AT THE ROOT | Streaming on Netflix 3.3.23
    SPLIT AT THE ROOT – Streaming on Netflix on 3.3.23 https://arraynow.com/project/split-at-the-root/ #SplitAtTheRoot #ARRAYReleasing SPLIT AT...

Julie Schwietert Collazo Books

  • The Book of Rosy: A Mother's Story of Separation at the Border
    The Book of Rosy: A Mother's Story of Separation at the Border

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Julie Schwietert Collazo is a keynote speaker and industry expert who speaks on a wide range of topics such as Tapping into Your Personal Power: How “Ordinary” People Can Ignite and Nurture Extraordinary Change, The Revolution Will be Joyful: How to Create Lasting Social Movements Rooted in Joy and We Don’t Have to Do This The Way We’ve Always Done It. The estimated speaking fee range to book Julie Schwietert Collazo for your event is $20,000 - $30,000. Julie Schwietert Collazo generally travels from New York, NY, USA and can be booked for (private) corporate events, personal appearances, keynote speeches, or other performances. Similar motivational celebrity speakers are Linda Ellerbee, Kathy Ireland, Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., Emma White and Cynthia Lowen. Contact All American Speakers for ratings, reviews, videos and information on scheduling Julie Schwietert Collazo for an upcoming live or virtual event.

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