Myriam Hernandez Jennings

Myriam Hernandez-Jennings started her work at Community Catalyst as an Advisor for the  Center for Consumer and Community Engagement in Health Innovation. In this role, she  developed strong partnerships, both with local and national health care providers, systems and businesses, to address the social, economic and political factors that impact the health of communities.

In her new role, as the Director, External Program Equity & Engagement, Myriam serves as a thought and action partner to the Senior Director, Equity & Engagement in developing and pursuing strategies to support organization-wide efforts to center race equity and health justice in Community Catalyst’s external programmatic work. To this role, Myriam brings more than two decades of experience working with organizations and coalitions to embed equity, inclusion and racial justice into their programmatic work to better engage and partner with those most impacted by oppressive systems.

Born in Chile, Myriam credits a cruel dictatorship with catalyzing her active and lifelong commitment to community organizing, power building, social, political, economic and racial justice, starting at the age of 12. Myriam is profoundly moved and influenced by Liberation Theology, and has more than 20 years of experience applying its theory in different sectors of the social justice ecosystem. This includes leading the Massachusetts Coalition of Domestic Workers, as the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy, in her role as the Regional and National Director of several Women’s Health Projects at JSI Research & Training Institute in Boston, and being a board member of the feminist collective Our Bodies Ourselves where she edited the first Spanish edition of their best-selling guide to women’s health and well-being.

As a strategist for collective liberation, Myriam will be often found supporting those who are most directly impacted by injustice, while simultaneously supporting privileged people to do and be better. To this end, Myriam co-founded the Center for Equity and Diversity and JSI Research & Training Institute, and in 2016 she co-founded and is the coordinator of Natick is United, a multisector coalition to dismantle racism in her home town, and works with several groups supporting asylum seekers and immigrant workers in the Metrowest area of Greater Boston.

Myriam holds a Masters of Arts in Theology from Andover Newton Theological School, a certificate in Maternal and Child Health from Boston University’s School of Public Health, a Nonprofit Management and Leadership Certificate from Tufts University, and earned a Certificate in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from Bentley College.