Jonathan Ramirez

Jonathan Bibriesca Ramirez, LCSW is a social work educator, clinician, veteran, and immigrant whose career bridges advocacy, clinical practice, and higher education. He migrated from Mexico to the U.S. as a teenager and later served as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman, deploying twice to Iraq. These experiences shaped his commitment to collective care, equity, and justice.

Jonathan was a founding organizer with the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance (CIYJA), where he was part of the initial group of immigrant youth leaders who envisioned and advanced the Right to Dream Campaign. This national effort played a key role in shaping the conversation that ultimately led to Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). He also led statewide campaigns to expand immigrant rights, including advancing the California Dream Act, securing driver’s licenses for undocumented communities, and ending collaboration between law enforcement and immigration authorities. His organizing emphasized grassroots leadership, transformative justice, and the voices of directly impacted people.

In his clinical work, Jonathan provided psychotherapy and care coordination at Kaiser Permanente and Special Service for Groups, focusing on individuals navigating substance use, trauma, and systemic oppression. At California State University, Long Beach, he is a Lecturer in the School of Social Work, teaching courses in practice, policy, integrated health, and macro interventions. His teaching and research interests include transformative justice, abolitionist social work, immigrant rights, substance use treatment, and veteran reintegration.

Jonathan views social work as both a profession and a site of struggle; one that demands solidarity, equity, and radical imagination.