Meet the Team

For over 15 years Zuraya Tapia-Hadley has served as an advocate for national non-profit organizations, as well as a trusted strategist for Fortune 50 companies as they engage constituencies of color and political and policy audiences based in Washington, DC. She currently serves as Senior Director of Government Affairs for TelevisaUnivision (TU), the leading Spanish-language media and content company in the world. Prior to TU, Zuraya was Manager of Public Policy for Meta (Facebook), where, initially, she led engagement with Members of Congress as part of the Federal Government Affairs team, and later joined the External Affairs team, where she was responsible for managing relationships with national advocacy groups across a wide array of constituencies, including national Latino, Asian American and Pacific Islander, Women’s, and LGBTQ+ groups. While at Meta, Zuraya led a company-wide cross functional team focused on addressing Spanish language fact-checking and content moderation, and co-chaired the global Latino employee resource group, Latin@.

Dr. Lisa Fazio is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. Her research focuses on how children and adults learn true and false information from the world around them, and on how to correct errors in people’s knowledge. Her work spans multiple disciplines including cognitive, developmental, educational, and social psychology and informs basic theories about psychological processes, while also having clear applications for practitioners, such as journalists and teachers. She received the Early Career Impact Award from the Federation of Associations in Behavioral & Brain Sciences in 2020 and the Frank Research Prize in Public Interest Communications in 2017. Her research is currently supported by major grants from both NSF and the Mercury Project focusing on why people believe false information and testing the effectiveness of interventions aimed at reducing the spread of and belief in misinformation.

Maritza L. Félix is a freelance journalist, producer and writer in Arizona. She is the founder of Conecta Arizona, a news-you-can-use service in Spanish that connects people in Arizona and Sonora primarily through WhatsApp and  social media. She is the creator, producer and host of Cruzando Líneas, a podcast that reclaims the narrative of the border. She is also the cofounder, coproducer and cohost of Comadres al Aire. Maritza Félix is the recipient of the 2022 Cecilia Vaisman Award from Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and the 2022 Local Media Association’s Innovator of the Year in Content and Audience. She is a senior fellow at JSK Community Impact Fellowship at Stanford and a graduate of the Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership in Journalism at Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. She is also a fellow of The Carter Center, the Education Writers Association (EWA), Feet in 2 Worlds (Fi2w), IWMF “Adelante” and the Listening Post Collective; She is one of the Take The Lead’s 50 Women Who Can Change the World of Journalism 2020. Felix has twice been named «Arizona’s Best Spanish-Language Journalist» and one of the 40 Under 40 in Arizona.

Nora Benavidez is a civil and human rights attorney. She works at the intersection of law, tech, and democracy as an ‘urgency incubator’ to elevate interdisciplinary solutions to complex threats facing our society. In all her work, Benavidez fights to eliminate barriers -- legal, technological, or political -- that may diminish the ability for communities to engage in democracy and with each other. Benavidez consults with various entities to defend free speech while also minimizing online manipulation and other malign operations. Benavidez serves as Senior Counsel and Director, Digital Justice & Civil Rights at Free Press. She leads the organization’s democracy and digital civil rights initiatives, including its policy, legal, grassroots, and private sector efforts. She develops winning reform solutions that blunt disinformation, hate, and other manipulation online while protecting digital civil rights, privacy, and equitable speech. She has testified before bodies including Congress and the Federal Trade Commission on an array of policy solutions that protect Americans’ basic rights and safeguard democracy.

Eduardo A. Gamarra is a tenured full professor of political science in the department of politics and international relations at Florida International University. He has been at FIU since 1986 where he also directed the Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC) from 1994 to 2007. As director of LACC, Gamarra was involved in research and public policy issues, academic exchanges, fund raising, and other multiple activities in most countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

In February 2016 he was appointed founding director of the Latino Public Opinion Forum at the Stephen Green School of International and Public Affairs. Throughout his career, Gamarra’s research, teaching and consulting focus has been on the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean.

He has conducted research and served as a consultant in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti and Trinidad and Tobago. The focus of his work includes security, democratization, drug trafficking and related illicit industries, political parties, campaigns/elections, public opinion, among other topics.

Roshni Nedungadi is Founding Partner and Chief Research Officer at HIT Strategies. Roshni’s research seeks to find nuance in how Americans, particularly BIPOC individuals and low-propensity voters, conceptualize issues at a time where division and partisanship run rampant. Roshni’s research on behalf of HIT Strategies ultimately is meant to lift up the voices of marginalized communities in the United States, one of the fastest-growing and oft-ignored voting blocks in American politics. Prior to starting HIT Strategies,  Roshni spent a half decade at Brilliant Corners Research & Strategies, where she conducted research for candidates in international, national, state, and local elections, helped manage national IE research for groups like BlackPAC and BISC,  and aided inventive, forward-thinking companies such as Google and AT&T in developing programs to benefit various impacted communities. 

Luiza Bandeira is a disinformation research consultant working in the intersection between technology and human rights. Bandeira specializes in OSINT and has experience investigating influence operations and digital threats, particularly with a gender focus. Previously, she has worked as a Research Assistant and Associate Editor at the Atlantic Council’s DFRLab (Digital Forensic Research Lab), and as a reporter for the BBC and for Folha de S.Paulo. She also works as an instructor and lecturer in topics related to disinformation and online investigations. Bandeira holds a Journalism degree from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and has obtained an MSC in Social Policy and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

With a deep passion for uncovering insights that drive strategic decisions, Enrique Castillo is a seasoned marketing research consultant specializing, but not limited to, the U.S. Hispanic/Latino market.

He founded Castillo & Associates in 1994 and, to date, has partnered with diverse clients ranging from startups to Fortune 50 companies, delivering actionable recommendations that propel business growth.

His expertise spans qualitative and quantitative research with methodologies that include focus groups, surveys, ethnographic research and more, tailored to meet the unique needs of each project.

In addition to corporate research, Enrique actively conducts research and serves as a consultant for political campaigns and elections at the national, state and local levels in the United States and Latin America.