Our board

Veronica Cruz Mercado

Veronica Cruz-Mercado is a Tucson marketing professional and small business owner. As a sixth generation Tucsonan, Veronica cares deeply about her community and the people in it.

A former journalist, Veronica has written for The Arizona Daily Star, #ThisIsTucson, La Estrella de Tucson and the Santa Fe New Mexican. She has previously worked in community engagement and outreach at the University of Arizona, and in administration for performance art venues.

Veronica volunteers as a member of El Rio Vecinos, a Girl Scouts troop leader and for her daughter’s school PTA. She has previously volunteered for Literacy Connects and the Arizona Student Media Advisory Board. She spends her free time in the kitchen testing paleta recipes, and in the community either participating in service projects or supporting local vendors, artists and makers at pop-up markets.

Ginette Gonzalez

Ginette (she/they) is a native and a big fan of Tucson. She enjoys a great story and a challenge, having earned a BA and MA in Classics from the University of Arizona and Villanova University, as well as an MBA from the University of Arizona. A first-generation high school and college graduate, Ginette is deeply passionate about how access truly transforms and uplifts lives. Ginette is infinitely curious and loves being surprised, tasting new foods, and visiting places previously unknown to them. Ginette enjoys spending time with friends and family, strolling Tucson neighborhoods, watching movies and TV of the lowest calibre, performing off-key tunes for her cat, and daydreaming.

Abigail Okrent

Abigail Okrent is a public interest lawyer, currently writing local environmental rules for Pima County.  Her legal career began in northern Arizona, as a civil legal aid lawyer for low-income clients on the Navajo and Hopi nations.  She worked as a Pima County public defender for 7 years, where she became aware of the Luminaria through its heartbreaking and necessary coverage of jail deaths. 

She engages in local activism in many ways, including in her role as a chair of the Southern Arizona chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, as a volunteer on the RTA’s Citizen Advisory Committee, and as a monthly donor to multiple local organizations including the Luminaria.

Zoe Montaño

Zoe Montaño (she/her) is a recent graduate of the University of Arizona’s School of Journalism, a graduate student at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School and a lifelong Tucsonan with a passion for community-centered journalism. As a student reporter, she was deeply moved by Arizona Luminaria’s coverage of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Two-Spirit and Transgender People in Arizona. 

Zoe currently works as a nonprofit digital marketing professional. Outside of work, she enjoys exploring Tucson’s food scene, spending time with her cat and writing. 

Irene McKisson

Irene McKisson is the cofounder and Principal Executive of Arizona Luminaria. Before that she spent 18 years in local news at the Arizona Daily Star where she started as a designer and copy editor and became the General Manager of Niche Audience Development, co-founding and editing #ThisIsTucson. She is a past ONA speaker and member of the Women’s Leadership Accelerator cohort; a participant and speaker in Google News Initiative programs including the Google Audience Lab, GNI Innovation Challenge and GNI Startup Boot Camp with LION; she is a GNI fellow in the 2022 class of the Media Transformation Challenge at Poynter and among the recipients of a 2019 Tow Center for Digital Journalism research grant. She has been an adjunct instructor at the University of Arizona for six years teaching editing.

Dianna M. Náñez

Dianna M. Náñez is the cofounder and Executive Editor of Arizona Luminaria. She is an investigative journalist, narrative writer/editor and storytelling coach whose story of Indigenous and borderlands communities was part of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning Arizona Republic team coverage. She served as a board member for NAHJ and is a member of the 2017 cohort of ASNE’s Emerging Leaders Institute. She’s a frequent public speaker for journalism and community forums, taught journalism ethics and diversity at ASU and is an expert in workplace standards for mentorship, diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and belonging. When she’s not in hype-woman mode or ruminating on life and news, she’s channeling her Mexican ancestors, talking to birds, and eating tacos weekly and menudo on Sundays with her familia.