CHE INSTITUTE:
Staff

• Luis Garden Acosta, President & Founder
• Martha Laureano, Director of CHE
  
• Gloria Zelaya, Teatro El Puente Program Director
• Dominic Colon, Theater Coordinator
• Peter Miranda, Health Coordinator
• Edda Santiago, Health Promoter

Gloria Zelaya, Teatro El Puente Program Director
Ms. Zelaya has worked with El Puente since 1999. She studied in New York and then in France where she was a Fulbright scholar. She also trained with Augusto Boal, founder of the Theater of the Oppressed. Later, she co-founded the Theater of the Oppressed Lab in NYC. She has also worked with organizations such as Elders Share the Arts in NYC, Union Settlement in East Harlem and as the Training Unit Director at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater.

Peter Miranda, Education Coordinator
With his roots as a former Peer Educator with Teatro, he now proudly provides training to the present day peer educators on HIV & STDs. He also assists in the development of curriculum for workshops. He loves writing, performing, painting and practicing makeup art. Mr. Miranda has been with El Puente for over 10 years.

Dominic Colon, Theater Coordinator
Dominic received his BFA in Acting from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and has worked as a teaching artist with Manhattan Theater Club, Only Make Believe, MCC Theater, and City Lights Youth Theater. He has taught all over New York City in high schools, hospitals, and juvenile detention facilities and has led workshops at New York University and Harvard University. As an actor, he has performed at The Mark Taper Forum, New York Theater Workshop and the Public Theater. He has guest starred on TV's: "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit", "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Third Watch". In film, Dominic appears in the remake of Neil Simon's "The Goodbye Girl". In 2006, he can be seen in the independent feature film "On the Outs", in "Bella" opposite Eduardo Verastegui and Tammy Blanchard and in "Freedomland" with Samuel Jackson and Julianne Moore. Dominic loves working with young people and is honored to direct the peer educators of Teatro, some of the most talented young actors in New York City.

Edda Santiago, Health Promoter
Edda is the Coordinator of the MCCAP, Managed Care Assistance Program, a service that provides guidance and instruction to community members seeking medical care and/or insurance from NY State. She educates her community through one-on-one case management sessions and group charlas during daytime and evening hours covering managed care issues and assisting families on making the best choose to meet their health care needs. Due to the fact that so many families lack medical insurance in our area, she conducts regular bilingual workshops to small adult groups in schools, day-care centers, after school centers, churches, senior centers, or wherever the needed. She has worked extensively on El Puente痴 Asthma Initiative as a researcher and educator- her studies and researches have yielded the disturbing statistic that the asthma prevalence rate in South Williamsburg is 12.4% - more than twice the national rate. She lives in the Williamsburg Southside in Brooklyn with her two children.

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