Jaguar + Thistle Team

Yader Juarez Rodriguez
Co-Founder

After more than a decade as an EMT and medical assistant, Yader believes deeply in decolonizing our medicine. He’s seen first hand the ways that for-profit medicine fails our communities as both a patient and a medical provider and he’s dedicated to building a better way. He’s been making his own medicines, extracts and potions for years — many learned from his mom. He is proud to teach his children to connect to their ancestors, make their own medicines, and wonder “why” at every opportunity. An avid gardener, he wants to be a farmer when he grows up. Yader is papa to two wonderful tiny humans, partner to Jessica, son to Elena, and loves seeking out ghost stories, heirloom seeds, and uncovering untold histories.

Jessica Juarez Scruggs
Co-Founder

Jessica has spent more than 20 years fighting for justice and building people-power as an organizer, narrative strategist, political operative, writer, policy wonk, program manager, and political healer. She’s driven by stubborn hope, radical imagination, and an unwavering commitment to building collective liberation.

Jessica has worked on a wide variety of issues including immigration, environmental justice, housing justice, abolition and decarceration, labor organizing, gender and reproductive justice, ending payday lending, family economic justice, medicare for all, and more. She’s spent the last ten years especially focused on how base-led movement organizations can win real change through the political and policy process. As a proud Political Healer, she works to use ritual to bring cultural trauma into public memory and to center the vision and leadership of womxn of color in our movements.  

She’s always happy to nerd out about poetry, herbal remedies, Congressional procedure or fan fiction (which she thinks is a perfect place for radical reimagining and she’ll die on that hill). She’s the mother of two incredible tiny humans and lives in Seattle, WA with her partner Yader, her kids, her suegra, and two naughty puppies. 

Elena Juarez Rodriguez
Healer in Chief

Elena is a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese herbal medicine practitioner. A native of Nicaragua, Elena’s healing work is also influenced by the healing traditions of Central America. Elena believes healing is within everyone’s reach when we listen to our bodies, our traditions, and the energies of the earth. She loves to watch other people discover the power of simple connection like breathing or walking barefoot. This photo is of Elena studying acupuncture in 1997 — and she’s never stopped studying how the universe works and how to create more healing. She’s the proud mama of three children — including Yader.