Elaine Díaz Rodríguez is Director of Partnerships at the Center for Community Media at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, where she builds bridges between community and ethnic media outlets and the broader journalism support sector — cultivating partnerships, catalyzing peer learning, and ensuring community media has a seat at the table in the field’s most consequential conversations. Her career has been dedicated to strengthening independent local news: she served as Membership Director at Tiny News Collective and, before that, as Associate Director of Membership Programs at LION Publishers, where she led a team of coaches supporting independent news organizations across North America to grow revenue and serve their communities sustainably. A journalist and media entrepreneur from Cuba, she is the founder and editor-in-chief of Periodismo de Barrio, an independent digital publication covering the impact of environmental and social crises on vulnerable communities, and was the first Cuban journalist to receive a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University.