Xaris A. Martínez

Xaris A. Martínez (ella/she/her) is the Executive Manager at Neighborhood Funders Group (NFG).

Prior to joining NFG, she worked at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, Southern Cultures, and The Southern Documentary Project, as well as serving as an award-winning bilingual undergraduate teaching assistant at various higher education institutions.

A native Californian raised in Guatemala, she earned a B.A. in History, summa cum laude, from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an M.A. in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi; she also completed four years of doctoral coursework in history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She is the board chair of Brethren Mennonite Council for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Interests, board vice-chair of Student Action with Farmworkers, and serves on the advisory committee for the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

She lives on the traditional territories of the Tupelo and Saponi peoples (the latter of whom are now organized as the Occaneechi band of the Saponi Nation, the Sappony Tribe, and the Haliwa Saponi Indian Tribe) in Durham, North Carolina.