Leadership

As UNCI Chief Executive Officer, Sofia Han-Hernand directs and works closely with the UNCI executive staff team to grow and evolve UNCI’s service, programs and unifying inspiration to the many Indigenous and Native tribal member UNCI program beneficiaries in Mexico, Latin and North America. Sofia Hans-Hernand serves UNCI in many roles, especially in co-directing the day-to-day 501c3 nonprofit organization administration, accounting, fundraising and compliance, working closely with UNCI executive staff team member Dr. Pierce Flynn, the UNCI Chief Operations Officer and President.   

Sofia is a graduate of San Diego State University, with a degree in Liberal Studies with a Literacy Focus.  As a mixed-Native woman nonprofit leader, educator and mother, Sofia’s passion, experience, education and upbringing have all brought her to this special time and place where she can help to enrich Native and indigenous intertribal relations, health, wellness and revitalization in the U.S. and in Mexico. Sofia’s grandmother, a mixed Indigenous woman of the Raramuri people of Mexico, immigrated to the United States as a single mother and helped pave the way for Sofia’s journey in service to her community. Beginning in the 1950’s and 60’s, Sofia’s grandmother, Bertha worked to help thousands of people immigrate from Mexico to the U.S. in search for a better way of life. She had a passion for helping migrant agricultural laborers and their families. In one instance,  she even worked with Cesar Chavez. This spirit of service to others was passed down to Sofia’s mother Gabriela, who introduced Sofia at a young age to the National Charity League, a non-profit organization founded to bring mothers and daughters together in a commitment to community service, leadership development and cultural experiences.

Sofia has held multiple community service leadership positions throughout her life, education and career, including serving as Escondido Union Public Schools teacher and educator with a California Multiple Subject Teaching Credential, a BCLAD Credential (Bilingual Cross-cultural Language and Academic Development), a Community Outreach Leader for the Andrea O’Donnell’s Women’s Outreach Association of San Diego State University, President of the Poway High School Key Club, President of Poway High’s ‘Growing Up’ AVID Program, and much more.  As a dedicated community service provider, administrator, educator, and mother, Sofia finds great joy and fulfillment in dedicating herself to nonprofit administrative leadership, work and service.

Sofia considers herself very fortunate to have met Chief Luis Anaya, our UNCI Executive Director of Programs, in 2017.  Sofia says that her life was changed forever for the better. For the past six years, Sofia has worked closely with Chief Luis Anaya and his wife Wendolyn Anaya, who is now the UNCI Executive Director of Intertribal Events, to foster and grow intertribal relations in the US and Mexico, to honor our Grandmother Earth environment, and to find health and wellness collectively through revitalizing traditional Native and Indigenous cultures, life-ways, ecology, education, practices and ceremonies.

Luis Anaya has dedicated his life’s work to serving the Native and indigenous communities of Mexico and Latin America as well as Native American communities in South Dakota and California. Luis now leads the continuing evolution of UNCI programs as Executive Director of Programs.

Luis Anaya is a Sicangu Lakota-ordained Chief and a Native intertribal ceremonial and spiritual program leader. He is fluent in Spanish, English, Italian, French and Portuguese. Since 1999, Chief Luis has been responsible for providing the traditional blessing rituals at many Native intertribal cultural and ceremonial events, sacred sites, and for the planning, running and management of intertribal Native and indigenous cultural gatherings.  Luis also has coordinated the provision of food, clothing, holiday youth toy drives and community support for Native and indigenous grassroots communities in Mexico, Latin and North America for many years.
 
Chief Luis has been honored and blessed to have been shown, taught and mentored in the traditional Native ceremonial and spiritual paths of life and sacred teachings by the renowned tribal spiritual leader, Chief Leonard Crow-Dog of the Sicangu Lakota Nation of South Dakota, as well as by the late Chief Luciano Perez from Southern California.

As the UNCI Executive Director of Programs, Chief Luis is responsible for planning, directing and overseeing the traditional Native and indigenous authenticity, scope and intertribal effectiveness of all of the UNCI programs and UNCI’s many intertribal relationships and outreaches. As well as planning and organizing with his wife Wendolyn Anaya, the UNCI Executive Director of Intertribal Events, all of the UNCI intertribal service programs, grassroots Native intertribal events, conferences, and the sharing of ceremonies, Chief Luis is responsible for the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing and health of every intertribal participant and all of the beneficiaries of the UNCI programs in Mexico, Latin and North America.

As UNCI Executive Director of Inter-Tribal Relations and Program Outreach, Wendolyn Anaya leads the planning, organization and development of UNCI inter-tribal relationships, program outreach and the operational organization of UNCI program grassroots field events.  Wendolyn performs many roles as she organizes, sustains and stewards UNCI’s close relationships with the many Indigenous and Native tribes and communities in Mexico, Latin and North America which UNCI serves. 

Wendolyn holds a law degree from the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico. A Mexican-born, Nahua-Zapoteca-mixed Indigenous woman, Wendolyn exemplifies what it means to unite Native peoples of the Americas.  Her service to indigenous communities began in the early 2000s with her intertribal ethnographic field research experience involved in her law degree in indigenous regions in Jalisco, Mexico. During this experience, Wendolyn became a legal advocate for the civil rights of the Wirrarica (Huichol) people of northern Jalisco, Mexico.  Wendolyn then served the Nahua people of southern Jalisco in organizing their environmental conservation and legal preservation efforts to protect their Reserva de la Biosfera de la Sierra de Manantlán Nahua ancestral lands from destructive international mining operations. 

In 2004, Wendolyn organized an important intertribal cultural exchange by managing and bringing a community of indigenous Wirrarica people whom she served in northern Jalisco, to attend and participate in a traditional Lakota intercultural and ceremonial community gathering that was held in the Guadalajara mountains. This groundbreaking work and event began the many indigenous intertribal cultural exchanges which have become the center of UNCI programs.  From that point forward, Wendolyn’s involvement in intertribal Indigenous cultural preservation and revitalization became a major focus of her life. 

In 2014, her husband, Luis Anaya, now the UNCI Executive Director of Programs, became an appointed, recognized and honored Lakota Sicangu Chief, personally ordained by the renowned Lakota Chief Leonard Crow Dog, making Wendolyn an honored Lakota First Lady.  From this special Lakota cultural position and as a lawyer specialized in tribal advocacy, Wendolyn is able to perform her complex UNCI roles of opening, developing, organizing and stewarding the many UNCI intertribal program tribal relationships, educational exchanges, authentic intertribal cultural events, ceremonial gatherings and educational conferences. 

As well as being responsible for her many UNCI executive program responsibilities, Wendolyn also leads the UNCI Women’s Circle Program, which twice every month in Mexico or the U.S, brings Native and non-Native women together from all the four directions with the purpose of creating revitalized intertribal and intercultural womens’ communities, health and healing, education, and community through the sharing of womens’ intertribal and intercultural traditions, stories and knowledge practices. 

Rudy Rojas is a proud Tigua Tribal Member from the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, husband, father, founder of Smoke Signals Marketing & Design, cultural advocate and surfer.

Rudy is blessed to see his life’s-path with the added perspective of looking through the eyes of his ancestors. He see’s the challenges we all face in life as obstacles to overcome, and lessons to learn from – in order to be prepared for the next steps in our life’s journey.

Drawing upon his life’s experiences and artistic gift, Rudy has dedicated his life to sharing the Native-Story by working with Tribes and Tribal Programs throughout the United States to create communications, artwork and messages designed to empower Native People to feel proud of who they are, and where they come from.

Like his ancestors before him, Rudy envisions a better tomorrow for our future generations. He sees his life’s work and experiences bringing him to this point in his life where he can help bridge the cultural divide which exists between the Native and non-Native worlds.
 
Rudy’s vision for creating art and visual communications to support cultural, educational, environmental, political, and economic issues is a gift which comes with responsibility. But, it is a gift that he loves and honors.

Dr. Pierce Flynn, UNCI Executive Operations Officer, is a cultural ethnomethodologist, researcher, educator and PhD from UC San Diego, with 25+ years experience in directing nonprofit, university and corporate organizations.  As an UNCI Executive Operations Officer, Pierce has many roles including primary administrative, operations and fundraising support for Sofia Han-Hernand, our Chief Executive Officer, and as the Chairman/President of the UNCI Board of Directors. He is deeply committed to Native Peoples and cultures.

Pierce’s roles have included being the national CEO of the Surfrider Foundation, Senior VP of Business Development at DUB Publishing & Media, VP of Business Development at SD Entertainment, a founding Board of Director of the Tony Hawk Foundation, a Board of Director for the University of California San Diego Africa and African American Research Center, and an Adjunct Professor and Professional Mentor at California State University San Marcos.

Pierce is now CEO of his company, Blue Sky Consulting, and has worked for twenty-five+ years in university, nonprofit and corporate sectors working with many nonprofit organizations, multicultural marketing, companies including Patagonia, Dr. Bronner’s, Amazon, Microsoft, MTV, Xbox, Pepsi, GM, Walmart and Target, entertainment and music media, and international government agencies.

His UC San Diego dissertation, entitled The Ethnomethodological Movement: Sociosemiotic Interpretations, was published as a book in the Approaches to Semiotics series by Mouton de Gruyter.

Pierce lives in San Diego, California, with his artist wife Lindsey and their two dogs, and surfs, free dives and fly fishes regularly.