One of the non-profit’s founders sits down for a big-picture interview with WSLR News.
By Johannes Werner
Original Air Date: November 19, 2025
Host: Unidos Now got started in 2010. Since then, it has been funneling immigrant kids to college, unlocking millions of dollars’ worth of scholarships and opening new horizons for 6,800 families in Sarasota and Manatee Counties. This weekend, the non-profit celebrated its quinceañera with a loud, joyful party at a hotel in Palmetto, the town with the biggest share of immigrant population in our area. Johannes Werner sat down with one of the founders of Unidos Now to get an idea about the challenges as well as opportunities ahead.
[Upbeat salsa music]
The Palmetto party included a booth for photo opps. Photo courtesy Unidos Now
Johannes Werner: The posh event at the Marriott Palmetto came with live music—Juan Bongoe and his salsa sound. There was a tribute to Hector Tejeda, the recently passed executive director, and a speech from Luz Corcuera, the soul of the organization for many years. There were graduates, like Liam Ordoñez who got a degree from Cornell in 2023 and now works as a hospital administration executive in Connecticut. And the event raised $100,000 right there.
The speeches looked back at the beginnings. Fifteen years ago, Kelly Kirschner joined forces with Bradenton attorney CJ Czaia, who bankrolled the startup, and local media entrepreneur Eduardo Barón. After a couple of years, the new organization decided to focus exclusively on education.
Led by executive directors beginning with Kirschner, then Luz Corcuera and Hector Tejeda, Unidos Now built a program called Future Leadership Academy. Every summer, it prepares middle and high school students for college. It guides them through the college selection and application process as well as the college experience itself with the help of community volunteers and professional coaches. The organization has offices in Sarasota and employs a handful of paid staffers led by Executive Director Evelyn Almodóvar.
The political context was very different In 2010. Florida politicians were beginning to make anti-immigrant noises, but the mass deportations aspired by the current political leaders have a new quality.
Kirschner
One of the big shifts Unidos Now has experienced: In the early years, the bulk of students going through their system were Dreamers—undocumented immigrants brought to the United States by their parents as small children. That group of people has lost the temporary protection it enjoyed under administrations before Trump. Many are now subject to ICE detention and deportation. For Unidos Now, the majority of students today are U.S. citizens—second-generation immigrants born in the country.
Taking off his hat as chairman of Unidos Now and speaking as a private citizen, the former mayor of Sarasota does not hold back with his opinions about current politics.
Kelly Kirschner: Sarasota jail is up 300% of individuals taken from the Sarasota jail and processed with ICE to detention and ultimate deportation. Manatee County is up 82% year over year from January through the end of July.
Collectively, that’s close to 300 individuals. You have to imagine that they have partners; they have children. What is that impact? What is that ripple? What is that generational trauma going to do?
At the Sarasota County jail, ICE detentions are up 300% this year. ICE workplace raid. Courtesy Dept of Homeland Security
There’s this belief—this fallacy—that, somehow, there’s all of these undocumented immigrants and children that are all across this country, when the fact of the matter is there are U.S. citizens all across this country. What is true is that there are many of those U.S. citizens who have parents of mixed status. Maybe one had a TPS visa because of Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua that they were able to renew for many, many years, and that individual was married to someone who came from Mexico undocumented. So you have these mixed status families that have children who are U.S. citizens, which goes back to what I was saying earlier about these horrific scenes of ripping children who are U.S. citizens from families that have mixed status. I don’t know where the moral clarity comes from anyone that says that’s the right thing to do. It’s really unfortunate that a community can spend the past 30 years if not 40 years building this region on the backs of immigrant labor, and that is not hyperbole for anyone who has ever gone to any construction site, at least over the past 25 years in Lakewood Ranch and Downtown Sarasota—all over Manatee County.
Guests at the Unidos Now celebration. The non-profit raised $100,000 right there. Photo courtesy Unidos Now
JW: The organization is now expanding beyond funneling kids to college. One additional way of integrating immigrants into mainstream America is economic. A new entrepreneur academy that started this week has already 33 people enrolled, most of them parents of college students guided by Unidos Now. The program is bilingual, primarily Spanish, and it is trying to help parents—and college graduates—with business startups and operations.
One of the founding ideas 15 years ago was to engage immigrants in the civic process. That idea is now coming back.
KK: These are U.S. citizens now by virtue of their birth. A lot of these kids that we’ve been working with are now over 18, so now I think it makes more sense, that civic engagement piece. When I was mayor in 2010 of the city of Sarasota, even though 20% of our population was Latino, only 2% of our registered voters were identifying as Latino or Hispanic. Of those 2%, only 30% were actually turning out to vote. That was really abysmal. That’s starting to change both in numbers of registered voters as well as participation.
JW: Kirschner says the programs are open to anyone, not just Spanish speakers.
And one more project: Kirschner would like Unidos Now to offer its participating families a multi-purpose room. His non-profit was in the running as a tenant of the City of Sarasota-owned Payne Park pavilion, but that did not materialize. Hosting actual quinceañeras could bring not only revenues, but people to the organization, Kirschner says.
KK: We’ve always wanted to have a space where people could come host that type of event—and, by the way, their investment—because they spend a lot of money on that—helps spin the flywheel that is also then supporting the community—their children—in other ways. We’d like to do that.
Future Leaders Academy participants. Photo courtesy Unidos Now
JW: Unidos Now is now pursuing the possibility of using part of Mixon Farms, a property recently bought by Manatee County. Kirschner proposes to run an agriculture program there, to reconnect immigrants with agriculture and agribusiness. Stay tuned.
Reporting for WSLR News, Johannes Werner.
WSLR News aims to keep the local community informed with our 1/2 hour local news show, quarterly newspaper and social media feeds. The local news broadcast airs on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6pm.