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Luis M. Arteaga, Executive Director for Latino Issues Forum
Latino Issues Forum is a public policy and advocacy institute. Luis received a Master in Public Policy degree from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, concentrating in Housing, Urban Development and Transportation. He currently serves as President of Health Access California and Vice-President of the Pacific Forest and Watershed Stewardship Council – a private non-profit created to oversee a$100 million fund and transfer of PG&E watershed lands into the public trust. He also serves as chair of the Council’s subcommittee charged with overseeing a $30 million fund for disadvantaged youth to improve their communities and receive environmental education. Luis completed his undergraduate education at Princeton University, in Politics with a Certificate in Latin American Studies. He serves as an expert on health, political and economic conditions in the Latino community to the Spanish and English media, major research institutes and numerous public policy organizations.
Latino Issues Forum: www.lif.org
160 Pine Street, Suite 70, San Francisco, CA 94111 T T: 415-284-7220
Melody Barnes, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
Melody focuses on domestic policy issues, including religion, civil rights, women’s health, gender equity issues, and the judicial confirmation process. Ms. Barnes served as chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, was Director of Legislative Affairs for the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and served as assistant counsel to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Subcommittee on Civil and Constitutional Rights.
Center for American Progress:
www.americanprogress.org
1333 H Street NW, 10th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20005 T:202-6821611
Medea Benjamin, Founding Director, Global Exchange, Cofounder, Code Pink
For over twenty years, Medea has supported human rights and social justice struggles around the world. Medea has promoted “fair trade” alternatives that are beneficial to both producer and consumer and helped form a national network of retailer and wholesalers in support of fair trade and was instrumental in pressuring coffee retailers such as Starbucks to start carrying fair trade coffee. She is author of eight books, including Bridging the Global Gap, The Peace Corps and More, and the award-winning book Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart. Medea received a Masters degree in Public Health from Columbia University and a Masters degree in Economics from the New School for Social Research. She worked for ten years as an economist and nutritionist in Latin America and Africa for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Health Organization, the Swedish International Development Agency, and the Institute for Food and Development Policy.
Global Exchange -
www.globalexchange.org
2017 Mission Street, #303, San Francisco, CA T:415-255-7296
Rev. Sally G. Bingham, Executive Director of The Regeneration Project
The mission of the Regeneration Project is to deepen the connection between ecology and faith. TRP is currently focused on the Interfaith Power and Light Campaign “a religious response to global warming.” Sally serves as the environmental minister at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco.
The Regeneration Project -
www.theregenerationproject.org
P.O. Box 29336, The Presidio, San Francisco, CA 94129 T:415-561-4894
Dereca Blackmon, Executive Director of Leadership Excellence
Leadership Excellence is an Oakland-based nonprofit dedicated to educating Black youth for personal and social change. For 15 years Dereca has led movements for youth development and community change. Most recently, she served on the steering committee for the National Hip Hop Political Convention and was founding co-chair of the Bay Area Local Organizing Committee(BayLOC). Dereca is an activist, organizer, and inspirational speaker who has led workshops and programs for thousands of youth throughout the country. Dereca was raised in Detroit, MI, and went on to become the first person from her high school to attend Stanford University where she began her student activism work, fighting to challenge the mono-cultural core curriculum, and establishing National Black Student Action Day. Dereca is also a licensed practitioner of Religious Science and the proud mother of a 7-year-old named Nia after the fifth principle of Kwanzaa meaning purpose.
Leadership Excellence –
www.leadershipexcellence.org
1629 Telegraph 5th Floor, Oakland, CA 94612 T: 510-267-9770 ext14
Michael Brune, Executive Director of Rainforest Action Network
Michael coordinates and directs strategy for RAN’s corporate initiatives, including the organization’s Old-Growth, Global Finance and Jumpstart Ford Campaigns. Previously Mike served as RAN’s Campaigns Director where he led an Old-Growth Campaign that successfully moved Home Depot to adopt its landmark wood purchasing policy, leading to a subsequent shift for more than a third of the American wood and paper markets. Before RAN, Mike worked with the Coastal Rainforest Coalition and Greenpeace, where he ran the San Francisco office for two years. Mike earned dual BS degrees in Economics and Finance from West Chester University. He and his wife Mary are the proud parents of a baby girl, born in August, 2004, Olivia Grace Brune.
Rainforest Action Network -
www.ran.org
221 Pine St., Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94104 USA T:415-398-4404
Linda Burnham, Executive Director, Women of Color Resource Center
Linda Burnham is co-founder and executive director of the Women of Color Resource Center, a non-profit education, community action and resource center committed to developing a strong, institutional foundation for social change activism by and on behalf of women of color. She has been working on racial justice and peace issues since the 1960sand on women-of-color issues since the early 1970s. Burnham was a leader in the Third World Women’s Alliance, a national organization that was an early advocate for the rights of women of color. Burnham is a widely published author on African-American politics, and feminist theory. A particular focus of her more recent writing, organizing and advocacy work has been welfare policy and the lives of low- and no-income women and Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya and the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. In 2001 she led a delegation of 25 women of color activists and scholars to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. Burnham’s writing and organizing are part of a lifelong inquiry into the dynamic, often perilous intersections of race, class and gender.
Women of Color Resource Center -
www.coloredgirls.org
1611 Telegraph Ave. #303, Oakland, CA94612 T: 510-444-2700
Andre Carothers, Executive Director of the Rockwood Leadership Program
The Rockwood Leadership Program is a national training and consulting nonprofit devoted to increasing the capacity and effectiveness of the non-profit progressive advocacy community. Andre worked for 13 years with GreenpeaceUSA, first as staff and then as a member of the Board of Directors. He currently consults and trains for a variety of non-profits, and is a Board member of the Rainforest Action Network and the Center for Environmental Health. He has written extensively on issues related to the health of progressive politics in America, and has a master’s degree in environmental science and policy from UC Berkeley.
Rockwood Leadership Program -
www.rockwoodfund.org
1442 A Walnut Street, # 475, Berkeley, CA 94709-1405
T: 510.524.4000
their families. Burnham led delegations of women of color to the 1985 UN World
Alona Clifton, President, Oakland/Berkeley chapter of Black Women Organized for Political Action (BWOPA); elected member of the Peralta Board of Trustees
Alona is currently serving her second term on the seven-member Peralta Board of Trustees where she most recently created an initiative to implement the Small local Business Enterprise Policy and Procedures to help small businesses gain contracting opportunities. She also established the Board Committee – Equal Opportunity &Access (formerly known as Affirmative Action) and increased the hours of the Faculty Diversity Internship Coordinator, crucial to recruiting and retaining a diversified faculty. Alona also spearheaded the successful efforts to bring the MINDS (Multicultural Initiative for the Negotiation of Diversity and Support Services) a UC Berkeley sponsored Academic Achievement Program to the Peralta Colleges. Previously Alona worked as Director of the Grants Program for the Vanguard Public Foundation, and served as Chief of Staff for Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson for over seven years. Alona was Born and reared in Berkeley, California. She attended Armstrong College of Law; She is a Golden Gate University graduate - B.A. in Pre-Legal Studies; She also is a Merritt College graduate with an AA in Administration of Justice. She is the proud parent of an adult daughter.
Black Women Organized for Political
Action - www.bwopa.org
449 15th Street, 3rd Floor, Oakland, CA 94612
T: 510-763-9523
Drew Dellinger, spoken word poet, teacher, and activist
Drew is also the founder of Poets for Global Justice and author of the book of poems, “love letter to the milky way”. Dellinger has been described by YES! Magazine as an ‘important voice of the global justice movement,’ and by Joanna Macy as “a national treasure.”
Thomas Frank, author
Thomas Frank first read Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt in 1982. But it wasn’t until 1988 that he founded The Baffler magazine, which aims to carry on the critique of business civilization that Lewis initiated back in the Twenties. Frank went on to graduate from the University of Virginia in 1987 and to collect a Ph.D (in American history) from the University of Chicago in 1994. His dissertation, which was concerned with the advertising industry in the Sixties and its discovery of the counterculture, was published in1997 as The Conquest of Cool. In 2000 he published One Market Under God, a study of the mythology of the “New Economy” and the corporate populism of the Nineties. Four years later he wrote What’s the Matter With Kansas?, an examination of pop conservatism in his home state and, by extension, across the entire country. Each book provides a different vantage point for viewing the cultural inversion of our times, in which admen are cool, the NYSE is the house of the people, and in which the gravity of workerist discontent seems only to pull to the right. Along the way there were two anthologies of essays from The Baffler: Commodify Your Dissent (1997) nabob Jubilee (2003), the former a study of the mainstreaming of rebellion and the latter a look back at the myriad idiocies of the Nineties.
Lois Marie Gibbs, Executive Director, Center for Health, Environment and Justice
In 1978, Lois founded the Love Canal Homeowners’ Association, and CHEJ in 1981. Her vision has guided efforts to provide critical organizing and technical assistance to communities engaged in their own environmental struggles. Lois sits on numerous Boards and Advisory Committees. She is the recipient of an honorary Doctorate from SUNY at Cortland, New York, the 1990 Goldman Environmental Prize, the 1998 Heinz Award, and the 1999 John Gardner Leadership Award from Independent Sector.
Center for Health, Environment and
Justice – www.chej.org
P.O. Box 6806, Falls Church, VA 22040 T:703-237-2249
Harmony Goldberg, founder and co-director of SOUL (the School Of Unity & Liberation)
SOUL is an Oakland-based movement-building center that focuses on developing young women, young people of color, queer youth and working-class youth as movement leaders. Harmony helped develop SOUL’s Global Justice training curriculum, focused on building a global consciousness among young people who are organizing around local issues of racial and economic justice. Harmony has built relationships between SOUL and dozens of grassroots leaders around the country who are engaged in organizing young people, immigrant communities, and independent worker centers as well as key leaders from the global justice movement.
SOUL (the School Of Unity &
Liberation) – www.youthec.org/soul
1357 5th St., Oakland, CA 94607
T: 510451-5466
Jim Gollin, Threshold Foundation
Jim was educated at Princeton University, the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and the International University of Japan. After work at a number of think tanks and as an investment banker, he was a founding member of the Social Venture Network of socially-responsible business-people. He is an active private investor, particularly in environmentally-friendly technologies and socially-responsible real estate. Mr. Gollin is on eight boards, including the Angelica Foundation, where he funds environmental, pro-democracy and human rights groups in the Southwest US and Latin America. On the board of the Drug Policy Alliance, he works to redirect the War on Drugs towards building healthier communities. He chairs the Foundation Working Group of Threshold Foundation, a network of over 300 progressive philanthropists. As Chairman of the Board of Directors of Rainforest Action Network, Mr. Gollin has overseen successful campaigns leading lumber retailers such as Home Depot, loggers such as Boise, and banks such as Citibank to agree to stop cutting, selling or funding the destruction of endangered tropical and Old Growth forests. He is also a director of Upaya, a center of engaged Buddhism. Mr. Gollin is also an award-winning writer and photographer, and speaks five languages.
Threshold Foundation -
www.thresholdfoundation.org
Suzanne Gollin, President, The Angelica Foundation
The Angelica Foundation funds human rights and democracy/social change movements in the United States and Latin America. Suzanne is also the President of Threshold Foundation, a community of progressive philanthropists leveraging its resources to support social change. Ms. Gollin sits on the board of Los Angeles Urban Funders, and is an active investor in innovative real estate projects in California, focusing upon and celebrating Latino entrepreneurs.
John Harrison
John is the Partnership Manager for Resource Generation, a national organization that works with young people with financial wealth who are supporting and challenging each other to effect social change through the creative, responsible and strategic use of financial and other resources. John brings to Resource Generation extensive experience in developing strategic relationships. John previously worked for several years in the field of youth organizing and health education within the non-profit sector. He has served as an HIV/AIDS lobbyist for the NC HIV/AIDS Alliance, program coordinator for a statewide LGBT youth leadership organization and as a community health education consultant for low-income community and women’s reproductive health agencies.
Silvia Henriquez, Executive Director, National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health
Silvia’s career includes extensive policy advocacy and organizing experience. She recently co-authored Our Health, Our Rights: Reproductive Justice for Latinas in California during her tenure as a health policy analyst for the Latino Issues Forum. Since taking on the role of Executive Director in 2003, Silvia has positioned NLIRH to become a leading reproductive health advocacy organization for Latinas by increasing staff, doubling the organization’s budget, and strengthening the programmatic foundation of NLIRH. She has developed programs that emphasize developing new Latina and community-based leadership, as well as produced publications that work to increase knowledge around reproductive health issues. Previously, Silvia worked as the outreach director of the National Abortion Federation (NAF), developing strategies to increase reproductive health access for women of color across the nation. Prior to this, she worked as an organizer, and thereafter the Coordinator, of the Feminist Majority Foundation’s national campus organizing program. Silvia has also worked with the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center, UNITE, and Fundación Maquilishuat in El Salvador. She holds a
B.A. in International Affairs and an M.A. in Women’s Studies (with a concentration on immigrant women) both from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. Silvia serves on the Boards of the Alan Guttmacher Institute and the Reproductive Health Technologies Project.
National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health -
www.latinainstitute.org
50 Broad Street, Suite 1825, New York, NY 10004 T:212-422-2553
Taj James, Executive Director of the Movement Strategy Center (MSC)
MSC is a national intermediary that facilitates progressive movement building through the development of strategic alliances. MSC works to support leaders, organization and alliances that are committed to building more effective and sustainable movements for justice and equity. Most recently Taj was the Director of Youth Policy and Development at Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. Before coming to Coleman Taj worked as the Western Regional Field Organizer for the Black Student Leadership Network (BSLN), a project of the Children’s Defense Fund. Taj was on the steering committee of the PAC to defeat Proposition 21, a California ballot initiative that would spend billions to incarcerate thousands of youth with adults. Taj has served on the boards of numerous local and national organizations working to build the youth movement and has written extensively on the role of to youth in social change. Movement Strategy Center –
www.movementstrategy.org
1611 Telegraph Ave., suite 510,Oakland, CA 94612 T: 510-444-0640
Van Jones, Founding Director, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights
Founded in 1996 and named for an unsung civil rights heroine, the Center seeks to replace the U.S. incarceration industry with youth opportunities and community-based solutions. In 2002,the Center’s “Books Not Bars Campaign” helped stop the construction of a costly and controversial “Super-Jail” for Oakland’s youth. Presently, the Center is working to close all of California’s scandal-plagued youth prisons and replace them with regional rehabilitation centers. Van is also a passionate advocate for the environment and for responsible business. He serves on numerous governing boards, including: Rainforest Action Network, WITNESS, Bioneers, the New Apollo Project and the Social Venture Network. Van’s efforts have earned him many honors, including the Reebok International Human Rights Award, the Ashoka Fellowship, and the Rockefeller Foundation “Next Generation Leadership” Fellowship. Born in rural west Tennessee, Van graduated in 1990from the University of Tennessee at Martin and, in 1993, from the Yale Law School.
Ella Baker Center for Human Rights –
www.ellabakercenter.org
344 40th St./Oakland, CA 94609 T: 510428-3939
Heeten Kanti Kalan, Senior Program Officer, New World Foundation
Originally from South Africa, Heeten currently runs the Global Environmental Health and Justice Fund, a donor circle aimed at funding environmental justice organizations in twelve countries. He is also the part-time director of GroundWork USA, the American office of one of South Africa’s strongest environmental justice organizations. GroundWork provides resources to South African community, developmental, and environmental groups in order to address the neglected environments in which black South Africans live, and assist in the building of a strong environmental justice movement. Kalan’s activism has centered on heightening awareness of the links between the environment and all aspects of health, and the broader socioeconomic consequences of unjust environmental policies. As an antiapartheid and post-apartheid activist in South Africa and the USA, he was active in the divestiture movement while at Dartmouth College. He is an active Board Member on the South African Development Fund (formerly known as FREESA, Development Fund for South Africa). In 1994, he received Community Change’s Drylongso Award for his consistent and courageous engagement in the international struggle for racial and economic justice. In 1997, he was awarded the Ignacio Martin Baro Fund’s Mental Health and Human Rights Award.
The New World Foundation -
www.newwf.org
666 West End Ave, New York NY 10025
T:
T: (212) 249-1023
Greg LeRoy, Executive Director, Good Jobs First
Greg LeRoy has been dubbed “the leading national watchdog of state and local economic development subsidies.”For more than 20 years, he has been writing, consulting and training for unions, community groups, environmental and smart growth advocates, labor-management committees, professional associations of development officials, elected officials, journalists, and state and local government agencies. Greg launched Good Jobs First in 1998, a non-profit, on-partisan resource promoting accountability in economic development and smart growth for working families.GJF has conducted more than 385 presentations in 107 cities in 39 states, including National League of Cities, National Conference of State Legislatures, Council of State Governments, International Economic Development Council and California Association for Local Economic Development. Good Jobs First has issued two dozen major studies including Shopping for Subsidies: How Wal-Mart Uses Taxpayer Dollars to Finance Its Never-Ending Growth. Greg is the author of No More Candy Store: States and Cities Making Job Subsidies Accountable(1994), and 1998 winner of the Public Interest Pioneer Award. His next book, The Great American Jobs Scam: Corporate Tax Dodging and the Myth of Job Creation will be published in 2005.
Good Jobs First -
www.goodjobsfirst.org
1311 L Street NW, Washington, DC20005 T:202-737-4315
Meizhu Lui, Executive Director, United for A Fair Economy
Meizhu is committed to being a life long “troublemaker!” She was a Boston City Hospital kitchen worker for 20 years, rising with the rank and file to become President of AFSCME Local 1489. The local earned a reputation for militancy, tackling tough issues like maintaining affirmative action gains during lay-offs and returning Haiti’s President Aristide to power. In 1993 Lui became an organizer for Health Care For All, building a multi-ethnic coalition which challenged Boston’s health system to stop focusing solely on treating the diseases of the well-insured and to adopt culturally appropriate systems. Meizhu is a longtime member of Freedom Road Socialist Organization, a national organization well known for its participation in struggles for fundamental social change, against racism in all its aspects, and for a strong left. She is a Trustee of the Hyams Foundation, and a member of Asian American Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP). Her work has been honored by a variety of organizations, such as the Commonwealth Coalition, Rosie’s Place (for homeless women), the Randolph-Rustin Award for the Education of African American Workers, the Immigrant Workers’ Resource Center, Mass Senior Action Council, and the Boston Women’s Fund.
United for a Fair Economy -
www.faireconomy.org
37 Temple Place 2nd Floor/Boston, MA02111 T:
T: 617-423-2148
Idelisse Malavé, Executive Director, Tides Foundation
Responsible for the overall management of Tides Foundation since 1996, Idelisse Malavé works with Tides staff to deliver excellent service and create opportunities for donors to increase the impact of their grantmaking. Over a twenty-five-year career dedicated to social justice, Idelisse litigated civil rights cases with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, represented women in family law matters, and co-authored a bestseller, Mother Daughter Revolution. She was a founding board member of the New York Women’s Foundation and served as Vice President of the Ms. Foundation for Women for six years before coming to Tides. Idelisse is a member of the boards of the National Network of Grantmakers, the Global Fund for Women and Rainforest Action Network.
Tides Foundation -
www.tidesfoundation.org
The Presidio, P.O. Box 29903, San Francisco, CA 94129 T:415-561-6400
Mariane Moore, Threshold Foundation
Mariane Moore designs and facilitates conferences and other gatherings with the purpose of enriching and deepening participants’ experiences. With primary clients from the philanthropic community, her current focus is meaningful engagement of donors to stimulate greater connection between who they are and what they fund. She is a director of the Threshold Foundation and of the Utne Institute, a non-profit whose inaugural project is Let’s Talk America, a national initiative to support civic dialogue among people from different political perspectives.
Threshold Foundation -
www.thresholdfoundation.org
Monica Moore, Program Director, Pesticide Action Network North America
Monica has worked on the interrelated issues of social justice, environmental health, sustainable agriculture and human rights since her early teens. She co-founded the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) International in 1982, a network now active in more than 90 countries that links local, national and international consumer, health, environment, agriculture and labor groups into a global force that challenges pesticide proliferation, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to insure the transition to a more just society. Monica serves as Co-Director of PAN North America. She is also a cofounder and Executive Committee member of Californians for Pesticide Reform, a statewide coalition to improve and protect public health, sustainable agriculture, and environmental quality in California by changing statewide pesticide policies and practices. Monica earned her B.S. in Political Economy of Natural Resources and an M.S. in Environmental Science Policy and Management, both from the University of California, Berkeley.
Pesticide Action Network North
America – www.panna.org
49 Powell St., Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94102 T:415-981-1771
Ted Nordhaus, Evans McDonough, The Strategic Values Initiative
Ted Nordhaus specializes in environmental, transportation, and land use issues. He works with a diverse client base of political, corporate, governmental and non-profit agencies including: the Apollo Alliance, a national effort to transition the United States to a clean energy economy, Oakland’s Safe Passages program for youth, the Contra Costa and Solano County transportation authorities, and the San Francisco Water Transit Authority. Ted joined EMC after four years as a principal at Next Generation where he developed winning campaigns for Environmental Defense, the California Futures Network, and Clean Water Action. He was formerly Executive Director of the Headwaters Sanctuary Project where he played a critical role in securing landmark environmental protections. Previously he was the campaign director for Share the Water, a broad coalition of environmentalists, fishermen, farmers, and agencies working to reform federal water policies in California. He has also been the state campaign director for the California Public Interest Research Group and has over ten years experience working with organizations such as the Sierra Club to the California Democratic Party. Ted has a BA in history from the University of California, Berkeley.
Evans/McDonough -
www.evansmcdonough.com
436 14th Street, Suite 820/Oakland, CA94612 T: 510-844-0680
Hez Norton
Hez Norton is the Executive Director of Resource Generation, a national organization that works with young people with financial wealth who are supporting and challenging each other to effect social change through the creative, responsible and strategic use of financial and other resources. Previously, He founded and directed North Carolina Lambda Youth Network, a statewide organizing and leadership network led by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered young people. Hez also served as the Learn & Serve America Program Officer for the NC Commission on National and Community Service. Hez was awarded a fellowship with Southern Community Partners and was also a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Associate. Hez serves on the board of the Funding Exchange as the OUT Fund liaison.
George Pillsbury, Policy Director, MassVote
George founded the Haymarket People’s Fund and the Funding Exchange. He worked for seven years as Development Director of the National Jobs with Peace Campaign and received a master’s degree in political democracy at the Kennedy School of Government. He has extensive experience with voting rights and election reform research and policy development.
MassVote – www.massvote.net
18 Tremont Street, Suite 608 /Boston, MA 02108 T:617-542-VOTE (8683)
john a. powell, Executive Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity
john a. powell directs the Kirwan Institute at Ohio State University and is a member of the Tides Foundation Board of Directors. He is an internationally recognized authority in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, and issues relating to race, ethnicity, poverty and the law. He also holds the Williams Chair in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Moritz College of Law. He has written extensively on a number of issues including racial justice and regionalism, concentrated poverty and urban sprawl, the link between housing and school segregation, opportunity-based housing, gentrification, disparities in the criminal justice system, voting rights, affirmative action in the United States, South Africa and Brazil, racial and ethnic identity and current demographic trends. Previously, Dr. powell founded and directed the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota. He also served as the National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he was instrumental in developing educational adequacy theory. Prior to that, he served as the Director of Legal Services of Greater Miami. He has worked and lived in Africa, where he was a consultant to the governments of Mozambique and South Africa. He has also lived and worked in India and done work in Europe and South America. He is one of the co-founders of the Poverty &Race Research Action Council (PRRAC)and serves on the boards of several national organizations. Professor powell has taught at Columbia University School of Law, Harvard Law School, University of Miami School of Law, American University, the University of San Francisco School of Law, and the University of Minnesota Law School.
Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race
and Ethnicity -
www.kirwaninstitute.org
433 Mendenhall Laboratories, 125 S Oval Mall, Columbus, OH 43210 T:614-688-5429
Wade Rathke, Chief Organizer ACORN / Local 100 SEIU
Wade Rathke is the founder and chief organizer of ACORN and Local 100Service Employees International Union, a member of Tides Foundation’s Board of Directors and Chair of the Board of Directors for the Tides Center. He has been a professional organizer for thirty-five years and is currently working with the AFL-CIO, UFCW, and SEIU to design an organizing campaign for Wal-Mart workers. He worked as an organizer for the NWRO (National Welfare Rights Organization) before starting a community organizing project in Little Rock, Arkansas which eventually grew into ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), now the largest organization of lower income and working families in the United States, with 120,000 dues-paying families spread across about fifty staffed offices in American cities. Wade is also the founder of Local 100, Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, headquartered in New Orleans, with operations in Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana. He has served three terms as Secretary-Treasurer of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, is the president and co- founder of the SEIU Southern Conference, and a member of the International Executive Board of SEIU. Three years ago, Rathke also created the Organizers’ Forum, which brings together senior organizers in labor and community organizations in dialogues about challenges faced by constituency-based organizations.
Local 100 Service Employees
International Union -
www.seiu100.org
1024 Elysian Fields Ave., New Orleans, LA70117 T:504-943-8864
Paul Rice, President/CEO, TransFair USA
TransFair USA is the only Fair Trade certification organization in the U.S. today. Over the last five years, TransFair’s groundbreaking work has established Fair Trade as the fastest growing niche in the $18.5 billion US coffee industry. To date, TransFair has developed partnerships with more than400 US companies, including such market leaders as Starbucks, Procter & Gamble, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Sara Lee. Working closely with industry, TransFair has launched Fair Trade products into more than 26,000 retail outlets nationwide, certified 65.8 million pounds of Fair Trade coffee, and generated over $54 million in additional income for farmers and farm workers around the world. Previously, Paul worked for 11 years as a rural development specialist in the mountainous Segovias region of Nicaragua, where he founded and led a highly successful organic coffee export cooperative called PRODECOOP. His first-hand experience over the last 20years in the development of cooperative coffee export ventures around the world is unparalleled in the U.S. coffee industry. In 2000 he received the prestigious international Ashoka Fellowship(www.ashoka.org) for his pioneering work as a social entrepreneur in the FairTrade movement and as honored in 2002 by the Klaus Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship as one of the world’s top 40 Social Entrepreneurs. More recently, Paul spoke on Fair Trade at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2004 and in2005. Paul holds an Economics and Political Science degree from Yale University and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.
TransFair USA -
www.transfairusa.org
1611 Telegraph Ave. Suite 900/Oakland, CA 94612 T: 510 663 5260
Mark Ritchie, President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy is a nonprofit research organization, internationally recognized as a leader in the development of innovative trade policy, especially in the fields of environment and agriculture. Mark brings 25 years of wide ranging experience in the sustainable farming and organic food industry, ranging from poultry and fresh produce production, wholesaling and retailing, to policy analysis and public education. In 1994, the Utne Reader named Mark one of America’s 100 visionaries. Mark is a regular columnist for farm and trade publications in the United States, Europe, Japan and Canada, and has written and produced two films on agriculture and environmental issues. He has served as a trade and environmental policy advisor to the U.S. Trade Representative and board member of the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture. During the last decade Mark has focused on linking leaders in the farming community here in the United States with their counterparts in other countries.
Institute for Agriculture and Trade
Policy – www.iatp.org
2105 First Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55404 T:612-870-0453
Gibrán X. Rivera, Founding Board Chair, MassVotes
Gibrán was born and raised in San Germán, Puerto Rico, until the age of 12when his family moved to Western Massachusetts. As an undergraduate he became a recognized leader in the Latino student movement. He studied Latin American Politics in Quito, Ecuador, was awarded the Archbishop Oscar Romero Scholarship, the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, and recognized as a Most Distinguished Scholar of the College. Gibrán served as co-director of Voto Latino, a project to increase civic participation in Boston’s Latino Community and Director of Community Relations for La Alianza Hispana, where he was charged with implementation of the agency’s Community Investment Initiative, an ambitious effort to better engage a traditional service provider with civic efforts throughout the community. He served for two years as Executive Director of Iniciativa, the Massachusetts Education Initiative for Latino Students, Inc., before joining a long time friend to start BelFrites, Inc., a business in the for-profit sector. Gibrán is a graduate of Boston College, BA and the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts, MA. He has co-authored a report for electoral reform in the City of Boston and a policy paper on new models to increase urban voter participation.
MassVote – www.massvote.net
18 Tremont Street, Suite 608 /Boston, MA 02108 T:617-542-VOTE (8683)
Doran Schrantz, Lead Organizer, ISAIAH
Doran has been involved with community and faith-based organizing for five years. ISAIAH is a faith-based coalition of 80 congregations in Metro and Central Minnesota. ISAIAH works to transform congregations and to transform communities toward a vision of racial and economic justice. ISAIAH is affiliated with the Gamaliel Foundation, a network of over fifty faith-based organizations across the United States and with several affiliates in South Africa.
The Gamaliel Foundation -
www.gamaliel.org
203 N. Wabash Ave, Suite 808/Chicago, IL 60601 T:312-357-2639
Jamie Schweser
Jamie is the Donor Education Coordinator for Resource Generation, a national organization that works with young people with financial wealth who are supporting and challenging each other to effect social change through the creative, responsible and strategic use of financial and other resources. Jamie was formerly the Outreach Coordinator at YES!. He is the founder of Iowa City FreeRadio, Cheddar for Change (an activist funding collective), the Peace Through Justice Giving Circle, and co-author of the novel Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing.
John Sellers, Executive Director, Ruckus Society
The Ruckus Society is an organization that is providing tools, training, and support to the social justice, human rights, and environmental movements.“A career thorn in the side of the establishment” according to Mother Jones magazine, John formerly worked with Greenpeace. He has been associated with creative civil disobedience and direct action, from the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle to the Republican Conventions of 2000 and2004. He and Genevieve Raymond are the proud parents of twins, born on election day 2004.
Ruckus Society - www.ruckus.org
369 15th Street, Oakland, CA 94612 510 763-7078
Ben Senturia, Threshold Foundation
Ben Santuria is the co-facilitator for the policy and systemic change committee of the Threshold Foundation. Based in St. Louis, Ben is a long-time political activist in the peace, environmental and campaign finance movement nationally and does organizational development training for environmental groups.
Threshold Foundation -
www.thresholdfoundation.org
Lateefah Simon, Executive Director, Center for Young Women’s Development
Lateefah has spent the last ten years of her life advocating for the health, safety, and economic justice of young women who live and work on the streets of San Francisco. Simon began working at CYWD as a street based Community Health Outreach Worker at age 17. Her immense passion and commitment led her to move up through the organization into her current role at the age of 19. As Executive Director and young mother, Lateefah has tripled the operating budget, the scope of programming and has developed some of the nation’s most profound methodologies for working with young women who are battling the justice system. Under her leadership, approximately 200 young women from the streets and locked intuitions have been employed as staff and paid interns. Simon and her team have developed one of the nation’s first peer-run education, employment and community reintegration programs run for and by post adjudicated and currently incarcerated girls. Lateefah was awarded the prestigious Macarthur Fellowship in2003. In 2004, Ms Simon worked as a senior consultant for the Annenberg Foundation to develop their first urban giving initiative. She currently serves on the board of the Women’s Foundation of California, the Advocacy Institute, and the Community Justice Network for Youth. Lateefah plans on attending Cal this fall.
Center for Young Women’s
Development - www.cywd.org
1550 Bryant Street, Suite 700, San Francisco, CA 94103 T:415-703-8800
Thenmozhi Soundararajan, Executive Director, Third World Majority
Thenmozhi is a filmmaker, singer, and grassroots media activist. As a second-generation Tamil Untouchable woman, she strives to connect grassroots organizers in developing countries with media resources that can widen their base of resistance. She was the director and founder of the Center for Digital Storytelling’s national community programs in which she developed the framework for community based digital storytelling. In that capacity she has worked with over 200 communities around the country developing grounded new media practices for their work. Further she is in residence at the MIT Center for Reflective Community Practice, writing about her experiences with community based digital storytelling. She is also a 2001-2002Eureka foundation fellow. Currently she is a co-founder and executive director of Third World Majority.
Third World Majority -
www.cultureisaweapon.org
369 15th St., Oakland, CA 94612 T: 510465-6941
Rob Stein, CEO, Democracy Alliance
Rob Stein is a lawyer; ran several midsize non-profit organizations in the1980’s; was senior strategist to Ron Brown, Chairman of the DNC (19891992); Chief of staff, Washington Office of the Clinton-Gore Transition; Chief of Staff, US Department of Commerce(1993-95); private equity investor(1996-2002). In 2003and 2004 Rob conducted original research on the nature and scope of what he calls the “Conservative Message Machine”. He became CEO of the Democracy Alliance in January, 2005.
Anthony Thigpenn, Founder/President, Strategic Concepts in Organizing & Policy Education (SCOPE)
SCOPE is a multi-dimensional social justice organization centered in South Los Angeles whose components include: AGENDA (a grassroots membership organization training African-American and Latino community residents to understand and participate in public policy formulation and decision-making); the Los Angeles Metropolitan Alliance (a regional community-labor alliance working for a long term economic justice agenda); CIPHER,SCOPE’s in-house community based research institute; and the Environmental & Economic Justice (which does statewide, national and international movement building and capacity building training). Anthony has been involved in neighborhood organizing, public policy advocacy, and community organizing training for over 20 years. He served as Executive Director of the Unity Workshop, a community-based organization providing programs for youth, was co-founder and chief organizer for the Coalition Against Police Abuse, and Executive Director of Los Angeles Jobs with Peace. Mr. Thigpenn is the recipient of the Martin Luther King Jr. Drum Major Award from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Liberty Hill Foundation’s Founders Award, the Charles Bannerman fellowship, and was recognized nationally in Mother Jones Magazine as one of five “Heroes for Hard Times.”
Strategic Concepts in Organizing &
Policy Education (SCOPE),
www.scopela.org
1715 West Florence Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90047 T:(323) 789-7920
William Upski Wimsatt, Director of the League of Young Voters
People call me “Billy.” I am 31-years-oldand extremely proud to serve as Director of the League of Young Voters, a national non-profit organization which teaches young people to organize voters, and the League of Independent Voters(www.indyvoter.org) a 501(c)4 advocacy organization which organizes progressive voter guides and voter blocs nationwide. I am co-editor, with Adrienne Brown, of How to Get Stupid White Men Out Of Office: the anti-politics, un-boring guide to power along with 10 co-authors. We are currently touring and organizing as part of The League of Pissed Off Voters. I wrote two books Bomb the Suburbs and No More Prisons, and published two others Another World is Possible and the Future 500: youth activism and organizing in the US. I love to listen to people and dream of building a winning progressive majority and a brighter future for our generation. The League is an unfolding miracle. I kiss my lucky stars every day that I am part of it.
League of Young Voters -
www.leagueofyoungvoters.com
