Liam Beran
Karen Menendez Coller, Centro executive director: 'Every presentation that you go with business leaders here, they're wondering what they need to do to train the next generation of the workforce.'
Karen Menendez Coller, executive director of Centro (formerly Centro Hispano), spends her days building ways to promote the long-term success of Madison’s Latinx community — and, in the last year-and-a-half, trying to put out fires caused by the second Trump administration.
In 2025 alone, Centro spent $2 million providing low cost legal representation to families facing immigration challenges. The nonprofit also works with public institutions like the city of Madison and Madison school district on responses to federal immigration enforcement.
“It's not easy at all,” Menendez Coller tells Isthmus. “We're not a typical nonprofit. We're working with system partners to solve all these dynamics for the fastest growing segment of the community in the state.”
The organization hosted its annual update on April 17 at its airy, light-filled headquarters on Cypress Way, which opened in April 2024. It was a packed crowd of 100; the parking lot was entirely full 20 minutes before remarks began and nearby street parking was filled up for several blocks.
At the event, officials announced the organization has received a $3 million grant from educational access nonprofit Ascendium for the establishment of a “Centro Tech Hub,” meant to expand digital literacy and workforce pathways for the Latinx community.
Centro programs director Norma Gallegos Valles told audience members the program would help tackle “persistent barriers to full participation in the fast-evolving digital economy” such as limited access to technology, a lack of representation in tech careers and “the lack of culturally responsive training and support as technology increasingly shapes education, employment and civic life.”
Centro also announced a new youth, family and community engagement position operated in partnership with the Madison school district and a fundraising push to raise $500,000 by September for its legal defense fund. But the news of the grant for the tech hub got the biggest applause of the day.
Wisconsin has a “mismatch” of job openings compared to skilled laborers, according to 2025 research from UW Extension’s Community Economic Development program — that is, there are fewer qualified workers than there are jobs: “From January 2021 through February 2025, the state averaged 190,180 job openings per month, while only 97,081 individuals were unemployed, resulting in an average monthly shortfall of 93,099 workers.”
Menendez Coller says that since the pandemic, many companies have built out in-house training that does not take into account the needs of the Latinx community, nor their experience with technology. She expects Centro’s program will help “upskill” workers for different industries statewide and that online trainings will be shared with other nonprofits in the state and nationally.
Adds Menendez Coller: “Every presentation that you go with business leaders here, they're wondering what they need to do to train the next generation of the workforce.”
The immigration policies of the second Trump administration have left a mark in Wisconsin and across the nation.. Refugee resettlement has virtually ceased; employee and student visas are hard to get, which affects the ability of companies and public institutions like UW-Madison to bring in talent from overseas; and many nonprofits serving communities of color have had to shift their operations and mission statements to retain federal funding amid a nationwide anti-DEI push.
Centro established its legal defense fund in late 2024 after Trump’s victory. Menendez Coller says the demand was immediate.
“I think from just January to February [2025], we had spent probably $450,000,” says Menendez Coller.
Menendez Coller has been surprised by some of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement tactics. The mass raids that she expected haven’t come to Madison, but individuals have been targeted. Procedural changes have also been commonplace.
“They'll send letters to everybody and say, ‘We know you're here. You better leave now, because something's going to happen.’ Or legislation changes from one day to the next. You might have come from Venezuela under temporary protective status. Now that's going to be gone,” says Menendez Coller. “I thought that we were gonna have to worry about raids, but not the constant shifts in one person's decision making and the trauma that it causes for entire families.”
