SALVADOR RUIZ-ESQUIVEL
Chief Executive + Co-Founder
Salvador earned the prestigious Univisionario recognition in 2022 as a top ten entrepreneur among Hispanic Americans. His leadership and commitment has established access to this remarkable arts-based non-profit in one of the nation’s most underserved regions. He was born the eighth child in a family of nine siblings in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico in 1966. He began dancing Mexican Folklorico in elementary school and continued training through high school. He danced with a number of companies from 1985-89 in Guadalajara. Ruiz became a business owner of a Mexican furniture imports and interior design firm in Mexico in 1987. He became the co-owner of a business firm in Los Angeles in 1989 and relocated to Santa Fe in 1992.
Since moving to New Mexico, Ruiz has worked as a teaching artist in the Española Public Schools, teaching dance and visual arts to hundreds of K-6 children. In 2008, he and partner Roger Montoya co-founded Moving Arts Española. In 2011, he served as part of the founding team for La Tierra Montessori School of the Arts and Sciences, a state public charter school.
Mr. Ruiz believes that education through arts is essential in the growth and development of a healthy child, and utilizes his extensive business background to bring responsive programming to children and youth. In 2023, his work was included in the United States Congressional Record and he was selected in 2024 for the CNM Ethics in Business award as a non-profit.
ROGER MONTOYA
Creative Director + Co-Founder
Roger is an American humanitarian recognized in 2019 as a CNN Hero for the visionary programming at Moving Arts Espanola.
Roger was born in Denver Colorado in 1961. His Parents Jose Amado and Dorotea Montoya are the most important reasons he has succeeded as a dancer, painter and an Arts-in- Education advocate in Northern New Mexico.
As a child Roger developed parallel interests in painting/visual arts and in movement, gymnastics and dance. As a teenager he earned a spot on a US gymnastics team that traveled to Romania, France and Denmark to train on an athletic /cultural exchange program. At 20, he received a merit scholarship to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center in NYC where he was mentored by Louis Falco of the Limon Dance Company and Pearl Lang from the Martha Graham School. He apprenticed with the Paul Taylor Dance Company and toured globally with the Parsons Dance company through 1990.
Roger is an accomplished self- taught landscape painter, producer, choreographer and founding member of Moving People Dance Santa Fe. From 1998-2007 he founded and coordinated the Arts in the Schools program for the Española Public School District that served 12 elementary schools and 3000+ K-6 students. Montoya co-founded the La Tierra Montessori School for the Arts and Sciences Charter School in 2012. He serves as a guest teacher/ lecturer at the New Mexico School for the Arts charter high school and the UNM dance department, as well as being an advisory board member at Moving Arts Española.
Cristian Madrid-Estrada
Chief Operations Officer
Cristian was born and raised in the beautiful Española Valley, he knows our community and its residents. His work in the nonprofit sector in recent years has enabled him a deep understanding of our communities’ services and needs. Cristian has close to 10 years of experience working with nonprofits and is also a previous alumnus of Moving Arts. Cristian was honored by the Governor of New Mexico in 2022 with a Community Changemaker Award for his contributions and work in the Nonprofit Sector.
Cristian first met Moving Arts Co-Founders Roger Montoya and Salvador Ruiz at the age of 7, this was pre-Moving Arts, back when they ran the “Arts in the Schools Program”. He began work as a youth mentor at the age of 12 and now almost a decade and a half later is proud to be a part of the organization that provided him with unwavering support and kindness which was instrumental in both his personal and professional development throughout most of his life.
Cristian currently serves as the organization’s Chief Operations Officer, as well as a Gymnastics Coach and one half of our Technical Lighting and Sound Team. Cristian believes that just as he was able to experience and take part in Moving Arts, every child deserves to have a Moving Arts. His personal mission is to serve holistically and be of service to those in need.
Carmelita Archuleta
Marketing + Communications Coordinator
Carmelita R. Archuleta was born and raised in the Espanola Valley and serves as the Marketing and Communications Coordinator, and Ballet Folklorico Instructor at Moving Arts Española. With a bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Mass Communication, complemented by a Minor in Dance from the University of New Mexico, Carmelita graduated with Summa Cum Laude honors. She furthered her education with a master’s degree in Business Administration, focusing on Management, from New Mexico Highlands University.
As a member of the Moving Arts team, Carmelita’s role as Marketing and Communications Coordinator allows her to merge her passion for dance with her expertise in communications, ensuring Moving Arts continues to thrive and serve its community effectively. With her unwavering dedication and commitment, Carmelita embodies the spirit of service and excellence that defines the Moving Arts mission. She is proud to work within the community that she was born and raised in.
In addition to her professional pursuits, Carmelita is dedicated to her family as a mother of three and a devoted wife. She finds relaxation in travel, enjoys spa days, and indulges her creative side through crafting.
Julia Elgatian Romero
Youth Program Coordinator
Julia Elgatian Romero has a background in art, education and human services. She began her professional life as an au pair at the age of 19, giving her the advantage of being able to travel, teach and learn around the world. Most notably, she studied art and psychology at the Royal Academy of Art in Den Haag, Netherlands, Architecture and Religion at Barefoot College in Talonia, India, and served as an ambassador for PUCV in Valparaiso, Chile. Being a student of the world opened her eyes to the breadth of complex problems people face universally, as well as the diverse range of solutions we are capable of enacting.
She completed her studies at the University of Iowa in 2016 with a focus on Fine Arts and Education. During her time in Iowa, Julia dedicated herself to her work as coordinator at the areas only low-barrier homeless shelter, and was a committed member of the vital art and music community. It was here that she met her future husband, an Espanola Valley native.
As her family grew, so did her passion for transformative education. Since settling in Northern New Mexico, she has led multiple hands-on, nature and wilderness programs, parent child classes and summer camps, as well as working as a youth counselor in behavioral health management. Her approach to education is holistically based and aims to consider the whole students well-being.
Julia is responsible for coordinating Moving Arts Espanola’s intern team. Our interns are involved in every aspect of our projects and programs and offer an array of on the job work-force training. If you are interested in further information, please contact Julia at interships@ movingartsespanola.org
John Paul Granillo
PIVOT Facilitator + Navigator
As a child I picked up a pen and it saved me.
My first strokes of ink became the foundation for what I am now: a Chicano artist from Santa Fe. I specialize in abstract and expressionist paintings, murals and sculptures inspired by my Indigenous heritage. My work is displayed in galleries, the International Folk Art Museum, and in public spaces throughout the city.
My art first took shape against a backdrop of pain. The son of Mexican immigrants, I was raised by a single mother in one of America’s most celebrated artistic towns. Yet my world was one of drug addiction, food insecurity, and an absent father. A place wailing with the pain of poverty. A place where a boy like me felt unseen.
At age 12, my pen drew for me my own island. There, even when encircled by chaos, I drew. I drew like a magician, transforming abandonment into birds, fear into faces. Yet the pen could not prevent my own colossal mistakes.
At age 20, I was a co-conspirator in a bank robbery and sentenced to prison. I was stripped of everything except time...and my pen. I drew for 12 hours a day. In solitary confinement, my art propelled me to a place of meditation and realization; it was the pen’s boldest act of salvation. I looked into a mirror and wondered when I had last been kind. I could not not recall. From that moment, I decided that as a human and an artist, I would forge connections and healing through art.
Upon release, I began painting murals. I co-founded the Alas de Agua Art Collective (Alas): a space that fosters artistic expression for low-income, traumatized and/or BIPOC teenagers. The artists at Alas work with about 500 teenagers per year. During COVID, I led a food drive through Alas, handing out 1,500-2,500 boxes of food per week.
During that time, I also focused on paintings and sculptures that reflect sacred features of my Chicano culture and Aztec indigeneity as well as of nature, with an attention to birds and their symbolic power that ties to ancient mythologies. Nature themes in my art brought me closer to the land. I co-founded Full Circle Farm where youth on juvenile probation participate not just in Alas’ art program, but they also “plant seeds” literally and metaphorically. They grow a range of vegetables and herbs, which they give to the elderly for free. It is an example of how art and agroecology can build bridges between youth and the wider community.
My art with teenagers led to other opportunities: I am the community coordinator at YouthWorks, a teaching artist at the Santa Fe Community College, a board member for various nonprofits and a member of the Santa Fe City Council Advisory Board.
I have created art in a diverse range of spaces. I worked with the artist Andy Goldsworthy to create an underground installation. With other Alas artists, I painted a series of murals inside Santa Fe’s central recreational facility that depicts ancestral and agricultural connections to water. I became a spiritual and artistic advisor to the renowned filmmaker Godfrey Reggio. Together with the artist and activist Jay Critchley, I made an installation piece representing the White House: a political statement built of tar and feathers.
I have ventured far from my childhood “island,” far from the closed prison cell. The pen has guided me, healed me and drawn the lines that connect me to my people, who also need to heal. I see the truth in lines from a poem by W.S. Merwin: “I needed my mistakes in order to get me here.”
Today, my goal is to expand my reach beyond Santa Fe to create art inspired by other sacred lands, animals and forgotten Indigenous people. Yet I also want to work alongside youth who may, like me, feel unseen as I once did. And who too can pick up a pen no matter how solitary their island. They too can create work that breaks open their scope of vision– a vision that includes possibilities as vast as the color spectrum, which is, of course, the ultimate visible light.