She’s built a welcoming place for Latino immigrants in Pittsburgh

On any day, the nonprofit Latino Community Center in East Liberty buzzes with activity. Health workers advise on care for newborns. Youth stop by for bilingual story time. Caseworkers help new arrivals navigate courts, schools, housing and employment.

If it seems the most welcoming place in the world, that’s what Founder and Executive Director Rosamaria Cristello designed it to be. Cristello was an infant when her family first immigrated from Guatemala City in 1989. Botched legal matters meant they had to return, and she was 10 when the family again crossed the U.S. border and settled in Arlington, Virginia. Cristello knows the trauma and complexity of being uprooted and undocumented.

With the aid of family and teachers, Cristello (GSPIA ’17) was able to rise. She became the first in her family to attend and finish college, studying environmental regional planning and geographic information systems at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, not far from Pittsburgh.

Afterward, she spent time working with Compass AmeriCorps and Catholic Charities on refugee resettlement. She then came to Pitt, studying public administration at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. In 2017, using her years of experience with Latino outreach and service, she created the Latino Community Center to offer a trusted organization where Latino immigrants can get accurate information to build a “pathway for success” into a new society.

The idea for the center was actually born a few years earlier as a project in a GSPIA class on nonprofit management.

Last year, she was one of 100 Obama Foundation Leaders USA who received training in supporting community change. She sat in a session with the former president but was also inspired by cohorts doing similar work in Alabama and Texas.

With Cristello’s passion, aid from grants, government sources and caring others, the center now has after-school programs in the Beechview and McKeesport communities.

“I know what it’s like to be new and face housing and food insecurity,” says Cristello. “Here we want to give kids different possibilities.”