Cristina Jiménez Moreta is an organizer and immigration reform advocate who has been instrumental in building a sustained and influential youth-led immigrant movement. Jiménez, who arrived in the United States from Ecuador as an undocumented immigrant at the age of thirteen, is a co-founder (in 2008) and executive director of United We Dream (UWD), a nationwide network of affiliated groups, organizations, and individuals focused on addressing the needs of immigrant youth and families. Through her leadership acumen and strategic vision, UWD united disparate groups around a common identity that has shifted public perceptions of undocumented youth and focused attention on policy issues that affect them.

In addition to mobilizing politically, UWD works to address the needs of all immigrant youth, regardless of status. As part of that effort, Jiménez has facilitated an inclusive, dynamic, and membership-driven network structure within UWD. UWD is recognized as a leadership pipeline, offering immigrant youth an entry point to professional and leadership positions as well as education and training for assuming management roles. UWD also connects its work with that of other social justice movements and has forged alliances with LGBTQ, black, and other racial justice and immigration reform communities. Jiménez is a powerful force in the immigrant rights movement, and she is steering UWD in its mission to provide resources and support to immigrant youth and communities of color while striving, in the long term, to make inroads on immigration policy reform.

Prior to founding UWD, Jiménez, co-founded the New York State Youth Leadership Council, and she was an immigration policy analyst at the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy from 2008 to 2010. In 2017, she was named a MacArthur 'Genius' Grant recipient.

Jiménez Moreta received a B.A. (2007) from Queens College of the City University of New York and an M.P.A. (2011) from Baruch College of the City University of New York.