Executive Board

Teresa Romero, President

The first Latina and first immigrant woman to become president of a national union in the United States, Teresa Romero replaced Arturo S. Rodriguez as the third president of United Farm Workers in December 2018. Formerly the union’s No. 2 officer as secretary-treasurer, she has years of experience overseeing the complex financial management, administrative, staff recruitment, personnel, fundraising, IT and social media operations of a far-flung organization involved in field organizing, contract bargaining and administration, legislative and legal affairs, and far-reaching international initiatives. Romero worked closely with elected UFW leaders as chair of the union’s audit and finance committee. She ran fundraising efforts that collected $1 million to build the UFW’s new state-of-the-art 10,294-square foot facility in Salinas serving the largest concentration of unionized farm workers in the nation. Before joining the UFW, she managed a construction company and a law firm that helped workers with immigration and workers compensation claims. Teresa Romero is an immigrant from Mexico who is proud of her U.S. citizenship and Mexican and Zapotecan heritage. She has played an important part in many recent successful union efforts, is admired by her peers for her work ethic, calm competence, organizational skills, ability to build relationships, and Si Se Puede! spirit.

Armando Elenes, Secretary Treasurer

Armando Elenes was born in Sinaloa, Mexico and immigrated to the United States in 1980 at the age of eight with his family. Beginning at the age of 15, he worked in nurseries, dairies and picked peaches and apricots to help provide for his family during the summer months. He attended Hilmar High School in Hilmar and graduated in 1990. He then served his country in the military, spending four years in the U.S. Air Force. After leaving the service, he studied for two years at Modesto Junior College and earned his Associates of Arts Degree. While at community college he became involved with the United Farm Workers’ major strawberry organizing campaign on the Central Coast and organized dozens of union supporters to leaflet stores and participate in other actions in the Modesto area. After graduating in 1997, he applied to attend the University of Southern California. Instead, he was asked to serve an internship at theUFW office in Los Angeles as a community organizer. After less than two years with the union, he transferred to the UFW Organizing Department in Delano and continues to work there, focusing on organizing workers in the Central Valley.

During his service with the UFW Elenes has coordinated field operations for political campaigns, run union representation election campaigns and also organized numerous other organizing efforts. He now serves as the organizing director for the External Organizing Department in the San Joaquin Valley.

Armando is married with three children.

Irv Hershenbaum, 1st Vice-President

Irv Hershenbaum has worked with the UFW since 1972 beginning as a college student in New York. Hershenbaum organized support committees to work on the boycott of grapes, lettuce, and Gallo wines. He received a B.A. in History from the State University of New York and a Masters Degree from Cornell University in Industrial and Labor Relations. He is the son of immigrant parents who came to the United States as refugees from the Second World War. Hershenbaum was appointed by Cesar Chavez in 1991 to the UFW’s National Executive Board and was elected in 1992 as the UFW’s Second Vice President. In 1996, Irv Hershenbaum was elected First Vice President of the UFW.

Hershenbaum joined the UFW full time in 1975 and coordinated grape boycott campaigns in New York, Boston, Denver, Toronto, North Carolina, Chicago, Philadelphia, Hong Kong and every major city in California. Hershenbaum organized picket lines, vigils, marches, fasts, demonstrations, and press conferences to gain public support for the UFW.

Irv Hershenbaum since 1994 has coordinated contract campaigns with mushroom workers at Quincy, Ariel & Sunrise, and Pictsweet Mushroom company. He assisted the rose workers at Jackson & Perkins and C.P. Meilland. Irv worked on campaigns assisting the workers at Scheid, Chateau St. Michelle, and Gallo of Sonoma.

During the strawberry campaign, Hershenbaum led the corporate campaign at Monsanto that led the neutrality agreement with Coastal Berry.In addition, Irv worked on the major political campaigns with the UFW including the historic victory for the mandatory mediation law in California.

Irv Hershenbaum currently heads the Contract Campaigns Department developing strategies to involve supermarket owners and buyers to support the UFW.

Giev Kashkooli, 2nd Vice President

Giev Kashkooli is the political and legislative director for the United Farm Workers of America, overseeing the union political, legislative, and communications work that helps build farm worker power.

He has worked with the UFW for 25 years throughout California, Arizona, New York, Washington, D.C., and Florida.

He graduated in 1994 from Brown University in Rhode Island, where he first became active supporting the United Farm Workers’ cause.

Upon joining the union, Kashkooli worked coordinating components of campaigns that won UFW contracts for farm workers at Chateau St. Michelle winery in Washington state and mushroom workers. He has continued to play a role supporting the union’s growth.

Among highlights from Kashkooli’s years as union political director is leading the campaign and managing the political work that has won equal overtime pay and heat illness protections for California workers, produced changes to California’s collective bargaining laws for farm workers, winning a national pesticide protection standard for farm workers, and strengthening farm worker health care.

Kashkooli has managed dozens of political races for the UFW, including the election of county, state and national candidates. He worked to win executive actions with the Obama Administration providing immigration relief and continues to play a key role in the UFW’s immigration reform efforts, including leading the UFW’s work to enact the landmark Farm Workforce Modernization Act immigration reform bill at the national capital.

Erika Navarrete, 3rd Vice President

Erika Navarrete has worked full time with the UFW for more than 10 years. Erika is currently a Lead Coordinator in the San Joaquin Valley. She has coordinated teams of organizers in multiple campaigns, helped coordinate historic turnout during immigration mobilizations, and oversaw a successful political operation in the Coachella Valley in 2010. Erika has deep and broad relationships in the farm worker community in the U.S. and Mexico. In addition to embodying the UFW’s Si Se Puede values, Erika helps lead a tech savvy, new generation of organizers. Her greatest hope is to help grow the UFW over the long-term.

Erika graduated from Turner High School in Kansas City, Kansas in 2003. She then moved to Delano where she worked picking table grapes while also attending Bakersfield City College. Prior to becoming a full-time UFW employee, Erika volunteered at the union’s Delano office helping organize farm workers and in political campaigns. Erika was born in Anaheim, California and raised in both, Kansas City, Kansas and Tangancicuaro, Michoacán, Mexico.

Diana Tellefson, National Vice President

“Si Se Puede” (yes, it can be done) was an attitude Diana Tellefson learned from childhood. She grew up in National City, California, a town only 15 minutes from the Mexican border. Her mother migrated from Chihuahua, Mexico at the age of 20 knowing very little English. Her mother would say, “Never let someone tell you that you can’t do something or make you feel as if they are a better person than you are. Always stand up for yourself!”

After graduating from Stanford University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology, Tellefson taught at taught for four years at an elementary school. During her last year of teaching, Diana helped establish a successful political action committee that worked to bring about positive changes in her school district. She participated in a post-graduate fellowship and was accepted to the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs, through which she developed leadership skills in public policy. Her passion for the advocacy of farm workers’ rights stemmed from a weeklong visit to the Central Valley during her fellowship. She told the other Coro fellows, “I think that this is what I’m doing with my life. I’m working for the United Farm Workers.”

Prior to serving with the UFW, Tellefson worked as San Mateo County and Latino outreach coordinator for Joe Simitian’s state Senate campaign. She managed field organization in five cities as well as outreach events and communication efforts in two counties. She also worked on the 2004 presidential campaign as the deputy director for Voices for Working Families. Diana recruited, trained, and managed 20 precinct walkers in a Latino voter registration and get-out-the-vote project in three Arizona counties.

After Arizona, Tellefson began with the United Farm Workers’ Political Department. As the union’s immigration reform field director, she worked to help mobilize farm workers around the historic AgJobs bill. In addition, she was able to participate in the union’s big organizing campaign at the giant Giumarra table grape ranch, focusing on packinghouse workers. This experience made her understand the deep fear workers feel due to grower intimidation.

Tellefson is now executive director of the UFW Foundation, which focuses on civic participation, policy, and research. While leading the UFW Foundation, Tellefson continues to champion immigrants’ rights. Last year, she mobilized hundreds of farm workers who traveled to Washington D.C. and spoke to members of Congress about the need for immigration reform. She has organized with other immigrant and farm worker advocacy groups around the nation to advocate for fair and just reform.

Lauro Barajas, National Vice President

Lauro Barajas is the UFW’s regional director for the Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey Bay area. He was born in Jalisco, Mexico and came to the U.S. at the age of 16. Upon his arrival, he began working with Montpelier Orchards, an almond company under UFW contract, in Modesto, Calif. Barajas’ first exposure to unionization came from his father, who was a big influence in his life, and his older brothers organized farm workers into the union. They also taught him the importance of community involvement and organizing. Barajas worked for Montpelier Orchards for about seven years.

He was heavily involved in community organizing with the Catholic Diocese of Stockton from 1988 through 1995, coordinating events and activities for both adults and youth. He brought together teens who lived in neighborhoods exposed to gangs, violence and drugs by creating programs for them that served as outlets for a better life.

Barajas began working for the UFW in February 1996 as part of the union’s major strawberry workers organizing campaign. He quickly became a lead organizer for the UFW in the Watsonville and Salina areas. He relocated to Oxnard in 1998 to head the strawberry campaign in Ventura County. His union organizing team won an election in 1999 at what is now Dole, one of the nation’s largest strawberry growers.

Since then he has led numerous UFW organizing campaigns across California, including boycotts, strikes and negotiations. Barajas serves as a delegate in the Monterey Central Labor Council and is often called upon to take a role in issues that affect the community.

He was elected to the UFW National Executive Board on May 20, 2016.

Bonita Rivera, National Vice President

Bonita Villalobos Rivera began working with the farm worker movement in 1997. She currently serves as the operations manager for the UFW in the Central Coast region. Bonita Rivera hails from a large farm worker family and was raised in Woodlake, California. Her variety of roles within the UFW and other farm worker movement organizations over the last 20 years include serving as a paralegal winning major wage and hour and gender discrimination lawsuits; as chief deputy to the UFW secretary-treasurer she managed union-wide budgets; and as project manager for the construction and grand opening of the $1 million Central Coast Farm Workers Center in Salinas. Bonita was inspired to join the UFW after hearing Dolores Huerta speak at Humboldt State University, where Bonita graduated. Bonita takes great pride in helping empower farm workers so their voices are heard. She earned a law degree from Monterey College of Law. Bonita also sits on the board of the Migrant Farm Worker Health Center.

Connie Perez-Andreesen, National Vice President

Connie Perez-Andreesen is a distinguished certified public accountant who became United Farm Workers controller in 2017. She was appointed by the union’s National Executive Board as the UFW chief administrative officer in 2018. voted national vice president at the UFW constitutional convention in November 2020.

Born in the city of Tulare to Mexican immigrant parents, Connie Perez came from humble beginnings. After many years as a farm worker, her father worked at the Woodville Farm Labor Camp where Connie was raised. She was a product of the Head Start Program and graduated from Monache High School and attended Porterville College. She later attended Bakersfield College and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2000 from California State University, Bakersfield with a B.S. degree in business administration and a focus on accounting. She became a certified public accountant in 2002.

Connie began her career as a staff accountant with a regional accounting firm based in Kern County and rose through the ranks to become one of only two Latinas to make partner in its 40-year history. The firm had substantial experience managing the accounts of major governmental, agricultural and petroleum entities. She assisted other partners in supervising the firm’s multi-million-dollar budget.

She was also appointed by Governor Jerry Brown to the State Lottery Commission in 2012 and served as vice-chair and chair of its audit committee that oversaw the commission’s $6.4 billion budget. Connie was the designated representative for Central California. She served as a board member and treasurer of the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, promoting business interests across the state’s central region, from Yuba County south to Kern County.

She continues volunteering with an array of non-profit and community organizations. They include appointment by the Bakersfield City Council to the Bakersfield Public Safety/Vital City Services Oversight Committee, board member for Latina Leaders of Kern County, Bakersfield College Foundation, the CSUB President’s Latinx Advisory Council, and past trustee for the Bakersfield Memorial Hospital Foundation. She served on the Supervisory Committee of the Southern California Edison Federal Credit Union and the California Budget & Policy Center. She also served on the California Democratic Party’s Finance Committee.

Connie was honored by the Kern County Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as Business Woman of the year; by Hispanic Lifestyle as a Latina of Influence; by the National Latina Business Women Association in Los Angeles as a Woman of Excellence; by the Regional Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as a “Mujeres del Ano”; and by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the California Society of Certified Public Accountants as an Experienced Leader, defined as someone who has advanced to the highest level of leadership.