2026 40 Under 40 Honoree: Jaime Martinez (24)
“The best leaders I've known make the people around them bigger.”
PHOTO BY LAURA PETRILLA
Jaime Martinez
Founder & Executive Director, Frontline Dignity
Jaime Martinez has trouble accepting “that’s just the way things are.” At 18, that conviction led him to start NA For Change in the North Allegheny School District. At 24, it has him leading Frontline DIGNITY, the Pittsburgh nonprofit he founded to organize community responses to immigration enforcement.
More than 1,000 Western Pennsylvanians have joined its volunteer network. “Once you’ve watched people who thought they were powerless realize that they aren’t, it’s hard to stop believing in organizing,” Martinez says.
His work has taken him from early-morning response calls to Moshannon Valley Processing Center, which he reached this year after walking roughly 130 miles from Pittsburgh.
Moving through former industrial towns on foot, he says, complicated his understanding of the anger and disconnection shaping the country. “You don’t get to skip the distance between where people are and where you want them to be,” he says. “You have to be willing to walk it with them.”
Martinez is just as protective of life outside the work: roller coasters, camping, movies, late-night Sheetz runs and Naruto marathons with his partner. “Joy has become something I protect,” he says.
