Reclaiming Re:Vision: A Statement from the Founders
June 12, 2025
To the Re:Vision Board of Directors, community members, funders, and allies:
Eighteen years ago, we founded Re:Vision with a simple but radical belief: that the solutions to systemic injustice already live within our communities. That belief was born in Westwood, where we built an organization rooted in dignity, equity, and local leadership.
Today, we write with both heartbreak and clarity.
Multiple former and current staff have come forward with credible, painful, and consistent accounts of emotional abuse, retaliation, manipulation, and intimidation under the leadership of Executive Director Mariana del Hierro. These are not isolated incidents. They represent a deeply troubling pattern—one that has pushed out talented women, eroded trust, and traumatized the very people who carried Re:Vision forward with love and sacrifice.
Though we no longer hold formal titles within the organization, we speak as the founders—individuals who have spent nearly two decades working alongside immigrant mothers, youth leaders, farm workers, and community advocates to build something beautiful from the ground up.
That legacy is being threatened.
Not by outside forces, but from within—through unchecked power, fear-based leadership, and the silencing of the very voices that make Re:Vision what it is.
As former Executive Directors ourselves, we understood and embraced a foundational truth: the Executive Director serves the Board of Directors—not the other way around. It is disheartening to witness an inversion of that principle. When board members have challenged Mariana’s performance, she has chastised them. When they’ve attempted to check her power, she has threatened them. And when they’ve tried to listen to community concerns, she has bullied, intimidated, and gaslit those who spoke out.
No one person is bigger than the board. No one person is bigger than the organization. And no one person is bigger than the community.
Re:Vision cannot exist without the trust and buy-in of the community. As its founders, we built policies, practices, and an organizational culture to uphold this core principle.
It is deeply concerning to see the current board dismiss serious concerns raised by community members, former board members, and other stakeholders as mere “individual grievances.” One or two complaints may be dismissed as isolated. But when dozens of people come forward, we are no longer dealing with anecdotes—we are witnessing a systemic issue.
It is equally troubling when the Executive Director frames these concerns as “personnel matters.” Promotoras are not merely employees. They are the mission. They are the program.
We built the Promotora model intentionally—to cultivate leadership from within the community, and to create a pipeline for those leaders to ultimately run the organization itself.
The true power of Re:Vision is not in the number of gardens built or pounds of food distributed. It is in the unity and strength of community members coming together to achieve what the outside world often tells them is impossible—or undeserved.
Re:Vision was never about charity. It was about sovereignty, agency, and belief in the brilliance of our own neighborhoods.
We now call on the Board of Directors to act decisively:
1. Launch an independent, third-party investigation into the allegations against the Executive Director;
2. Ensure no employee faces retaliation for speaking up;
3.Immediately suspend the Executive Director’s authority over hiring, firing, and disciplinary action during the investigation;
4. Restore transparency, accountability, and shared governance to the organization.
We stand with the Promotoras.
We stand with every employee who has suffered in silence or left in pain.
We stand with the board members who resigned on principle.
And we stand with the community that continues to believe in the mission, even as the institution has lost its way.
Re:Vision does not belong to one person. It belongs to the community. And the community is watching.
With resolve and in solidarity,