Faculty

Ashley Montoya, JD, MHA, CCHW. is a dynamic, cross-sectoral community leader with experience working in education, government, the judicial system, and healthcare. Born and raised in the Española Valley, Ashley's work has centered on prevention and harm reduction, driven by a deep commitment to social justice. She has contributed to numerous community-based prevention programs across Rio Arriba County and is especially passionate about community outreach. During her time with the City of Española, she served as Director of Project RACE, a NM High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) initiative aimed at reducing drug and alcohol use, improving graduation rates, decreasing delinquency and crime, and promoting life skills, career and college readiness, and local employment opportunities.
Ashley earned a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Management from Northern New Mexico College in 2015 and a Master’s degree in Healthcare Administration from Colorado State University–Global in 2017. She completed a Community Health Worker certificate at UNM-Taos in 2018, where she later joined the program’s faculty. Ashley holds numerous training certifications in areas such as QPR suicide prevention, youth SBIRT, adolescent trauma and substance misuse, and mediation. She is passionate about higher education and deeply values the opportunity to learn from and mentor students in the CHW program.
Ashley graduated from Mitchell Hamline School of Law in May 2025. During law school, she spent two summers working in public defense, where she deepened her commitment to advocacy and justice. In addition to teaching at UNM-Taos, she currently works at Los Alamos National Laboratory.


Juliana Anastasoff, MS. Juliana joined the public health workforce as a peer health advocate in 1977 and has continued that work since. She served 20 years as a health education specialist on care teams in migrant, workplace, primary care, hospital, and school-based settings before moving into program development and health workforce training. She first built a team of CHWs in 1994, recruiting moms living with HIV to provide education and support to their peers. Over the years she has developed roles for, hired, trained, and supervised CHWs in both community and clinical settings, working in areas such as immigrant outreach, veteran’s health, adolescent health, women’s health, diabetes, hepatitis-c, elder care, access to care, cardiovascular disease, depression, and community assessment. She developed this certificate program for the UNM system, and consulted on the redesign of the seminal textbook Foundations for Community Health Workers (2nd edition).

Juliana was appointed to the state’s CHW Advisory Council 2009-2013, leading the identification of core competencies, development of training content standards for NM, and conducting funded demonstration pilots for integrating core competency training into a credit-bearing college training program. From 2008-2024 she served as then UNM-HSC Health Extension Officer in the North, focused on strengthening local health capacity and infrastructure, building the health professions pipeline, and addressing the determinants of health. Prior to joining UNM she served as Chief Project Officer at El Centro Family Health, a seven-county community health center (FQHC) system developing collaborative health homes, prevention and disease management initiatives, integrated behavioral health services, telehealth systems, and quality improvement initiatives across northern New Mexico. She’s directed a Rural/Frontier Center of Excellence in Women’s Health, an NM operating site of the National Health Corps (AmeriCorps), a VA-contracted Community-Based Outpatient Clinic system, and served as a training specialist in a regional HRSA training center. She holds a BS degree in Communications, and an interdisciplinary Master’s degree in Community Development with applied practice concentration in health education and communication. She’s a graduate of the National Service Leadership Institute, the Cultivating Women’s Leadership Program (the Bioneers), and the Institute for Health Improvement’s (IHI) Primary Care Coaching Professional Development Program.

Victoria Flores, MA. Victoria is a dedicated community member with a long history of working with groups and on group development, with special emphasis on youth and service learning. Originally from the Bay Area, Victoria has deep familial roots in northern New Mexico. After completing her training in the San Luis Valley, she dedicated her next steps to moving her family back to New Mexico to raise her children in the communities her grandparents loved and called home. A central theme of Victoria’s work revolves around the art and science of supporting group processes in experiential and expeditionary learning environments. Through her long-standing commitment to national service through AmeriCorps, she’s worked in community, school, and higher education settings, including work abroad in México and Costa Rica. In addition to teaching at UNM-Taos, Victoria is currently the Training Manager at Rocky Mountain Youth Corps where she develops and delivers a wide range of trainings ranging from citizenship to team-building to suicide prevention. Victoria earned her BA in Sociology, as well as a Master’s Degree in Community Counseling from Adams State University. Over the past decade she has offered Mental Health First Aid courses to hundreds of organizations, community members, schools, tribal agencies, and youth. She has a passion for supporting people dedicated to addressing needs in the community, and supporting access to resources.

 

MaryAnn Ferguson, BS, EMS I-C. MaryAnn is a dedicated and experienced emergency medical services professional with over a decade of service in Northern New Mexico. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Emergency Medical Services from the University of New Mexico, is a Nationally Registered Paramedic (NRP) through the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT), and is a New Mexico state-licensed paramedic. MaryAnn has been involved in EMS in Northern New Mexico since 2012, brings extensive experience to the practice of emergency medicine, and continues to work in the field part-time as a Paramedic for the village of Angel Fire’s Fire Department - where she also serves as their Department Training Coordinator. Prior to her career in EMS, MaryAnn served as a veterinary technician for over 15 years.

In addition to her hands-on clinical expertise, MaryAnn is also a skilled emergency medicine instructor. As an EMS Instructor Coordinator with the University of New Mexico EMS Academy, MaryAnn plays a key role in training and mentoring future EMS providers. She serves as Lead EMS Instructor, as well as the EMS Clinical and Lab Coordinator at UNM-Taos. As an American Heart Instructor, she is proficient in teaching various life-saving courses such as Heart Savers First Aid and CPR, BLS CPR, ACLS, PALS, and PEARS. She also serves as instructor for PH104: Clinical Basics for Frontline Health Workers - offered through the Community & Public Health Program.

Through her clinical and teaching work in both the EMT and Community Health Programs, MaryAnn continues to inspire and shape the next generation of healthcare professionals serving northern New Mexico through classroom instruction, hands-on skills labs, and clinical coordination.