Jerry Tello comes from a family of Mexican, Texan roots and was raised in South Central Los Angeles. He is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of fatherhood, family strengthening, community peace and mobilization and culturally based violence prevention/intervention issues. Over the last 30 thirty years Mr. Tello has dedicated his efforts to preventing and healing the pain of relationship/community violence, teen pregnancy, fatherless-ness and internalized oppression by speaking to over half a million people and training thousands of facilitators across the nation to address these issues. He is co-founder of the National Compadres Network (established in 1988) and the present Director of the National Latino Fatherhood and Family Institute. 

Mr. Tello has motivated, trained and mentored thousands of individuals, organizations and community groups in the various curriculum (see website jerrytello.com) that he has authored addressing the issues of Fatherhood, Male "Rites of Passage," relationship and gang violence prevention, teen fatherhood, pregnancy prevention, family strengthening, fatherhood literacy and community peace. He served as a principal consultant for Scholastic Books on International Bilingual Literacy curriculum focused at reaching low-income families, he is the author of "A Fathers Love,"  a series of children’s books, coeditor of Family Violence and Men of Color and a series of motivational CD’s.