Staff
OUR
TEAM
The team at Connect Casino Road is a dedicated group of individuals representing the neighborhood that they serve. Together, the CCR team provides staffing and support to the CCR partnerships through connecting and facilitating, fundraising, engaging partners in opportunities, developing programs, and bringing learning and training opportunities to the community.
Alvaro Guillen
Co-Director
Born in Peru, Alvaro was in contact with remote indigenous communities in the Andes mountains and the Amazon rainforest since an early age and witnessed the profound inequities and exclusion that those communities suffered. As a young entrepreneur studying business management in Lima, he started a small nonprofit to provide adequate sports equipment and access to training facilities to low-income athletes. Before coming to the US, Alvaro worked and lived across Central America, South America, and the Caribbean as the Marketing and Sales Manager for a German company. After immigrating, he worked with Latinx communities as the publisher of the newspaper La Raza del Noroeste and as Washington’s spokesperson for the US Census Bureau. Alvaro works with cross-sector organizations, stakeholders, and government amplifying the community’s voice and advancing equity with the goal of breaking the intergenerational cycles of poverty in the Casino Road neighborhood.
Jillian Robinson
Co-Director
Jillian believes that strategic investments in families benefit entire communities. This passion for direct service and community impact drives her work as Assistant Director. Prior to joining Connect Casino Road, she spent several years working for organizations in the homelessness and trauma-informed care sectors, including raising funds and building partnerships for Covenant House, a nonprofit that serves youth who have experienced trafficking and homelessness. Jillian holds a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Washington, where she specialized in nonprofit management and had the opportunity to support the work of organizations such as Imagine Housing, Team Read, and the King County Local Food Initiative. Through these projects, Jillian furthered her experience in collaborative work and the centering of community voice. She draws on this background in her role as Co-Director to support Connect Casino Road’s vision for local families.