(RALEIGH, NC) - The National Association of Social Workers North Carolina Chapter (NASW-NC) is proud to award Marisol Jiménez, MSW with the 2025 Myrna Miller Wellons Advocate of the Year Award. Marisol Jiménez was selected to receive this award because of her commitments to immigrant justice, racial equity, and for her organization’s outreach to people in Western North Carolina impacted by Hurricane Helene. This included “Healing from Helene Children’s Libraries” to bring trauma-informed, bilingual and BIPOC centered books to children affected by the hurricane. Marisol received her MSW from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Marisol Jiménez is the founder and principal of Tepeyac Consulting, Inc. a national consulting practice based in Asheville, North Carolina. She began her path twenty-five years ago when finding her home within the immigrant justice movement as an activist and advocate. Her work in North Carolina includes co-leading a statewide advocacy organization working on public policy issues at the local, state, and national levels, eventually co-leading statewide mass demonstrations for immigrant justice in 2006 and 2007. Taking in the lessons of a decade of organizing within the nonprofit sector, Marisol began working to open a conversation about the impacts of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy within our own movements. Since that decision, she co-developed a theory of change and racial equity framework that has been brought to hundreds of nonprofit organizations across the country - “T Spiral of Transformative Change: A Liberatory Approach to Racial Equity.” Through this work, she has established a record for holding spaces and guiding processes that support meaningful dialogue across lines of difference, move groups from analysis to action, and hold space for courageous conversations and deep self-reflection. It is her strong belief that this work is most impactful when it is an intersectional, intentional, and radically hopeful practice grounded in our personal, collective, and ancestral healing. Her work has become that of holding spaces for people’s visions and strategies; their conflict and healing; and their deepening analysis of power and liberation.
While reflecting on her work, Marisol expressed, “My calling is to contribute to the creation of radical spaces for us to witness ourselves and each other; spaces where we can listen and reflect and channel messages of healing and resistance. We connect ideas and patterns and work together to understand where the shadows of colonization, white supremacy, and patriarchy exist - in the world around us and the world within us. And then we be bold - we dream and vision liberation. We build a way out of no way. We create yes for each other. And we add our small stones of activism to the building of an edifice of hope.”
The National Association of Social Workers North Carolina (NASW-NC) is a membership organization of professional social workers in North Carolina. NASW promotes, develops, and protects the practice of social work and social workers. NASW also seeks to enhance the well-being of individuals, families, and communities through its advocacy.
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(RALEIGH, NC) - The National Association of Social Workers North Carolina Chapter (NASW-NC) is proud to award Marisol Jiménez, MSW with the 
