Jean Guerrero is a senior journalism fellow at the Latina Futures, 2050 Lab, where she is working to empower Latinas in the media and create a more informed America when it comes to our diverse communities. Her work aims to counter the rise of authoritarianism, which relies on dehumanizing and deceptive storytelling about Latinos.
A contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, she is the author of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda” and “Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir,” which won a PEN Literary Award and was one of NPR’s Best Books of 2018.
One of the most prominent Latina voices in the U.S. media, she was an opinion columnist at the Los Angeles Times for three years. Her work has also been featured in Vanity Fair, Politico, Wired, the Washington Post, the Nation and “Best American Essays 2019.” She has been a guest on MSNBC, CNN, Univision, NPR’s Fresh Air, the PBS NewsHour, Democracy Now!, LatinoUSA and other shows. As an investigative reporter at KPBS, she won an Emmy for her coverage of the U.S.-Mexico border and was one of the first reporters to cover Trump’s family separations. She started her career at the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires as a correspondent in Mexico City.
She has a B.A. in journalism from the University of Southern California and an M.F.A in creative nonfiction from Goucher College. She taught memoir and nonfiction at San Jose State University as their Lurie Distinguished Visiting Author in 2023. Born and raised in San Diego, Guerrero is the daughter of a Mexican immigrant father and a single Puerto Rican mother who showed her the unique power of Latinas. She now lives in Los Angeles, where she dances salsa, bachata and Brazilian Zouk.
