Amy Bacigalupo, Farm Beginnings Director, Land Stewardship Project, amyb@landstewardshipproject.org
Amy Bacigalupo directs Farm Beginnings, a farmer-led and community based beginning farmer training program of the Land Stewardship Project. She has worked directly with farmer-to-farmer training for 20 years helping to launch over 850 new farmers. LSP is a member of the Farm Beginnings Collaborative, a national alliance of 13 independent regional groups of farmers, farmer networks, and organizations, who are working together to get more farmers on the land. Amy is also an organic apple grower and co-owns Kalliroe Orchard with her husband Paul and their two children in Montevideo, Minnesota. Prior to joining the Land Stewardship Project staff Amy studied agroforestry, sustainable agriculture and international development. She received her Masters of Science in Forestry from the U of MN and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay SA.
Amanda Ballantyne, National Director, The Main Street Alliance, amanda@mainstreetalliance.org
Amanda joined the Main Street Alliance as Network Director in 2013. She brings more than a decade of progressive organizing, policy, and legal experience. She worked for several national non-profit organizations, including Public Citizen and Free Press. She has also worked as a labor organizer and policy analyst for CWA and SEIU. Amanda graduated from Smith College and earned her law degree from the University of Washington School of Law.
Heather Boushey, President & CEO, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, HBoushey@Equitablegrowth.org
Heather Boushey is the President & CEO and co-founder of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, which was launched in 2013. She is one of the nation’s most influential voices on economic policy and a leading economist who focuses on the intersection between economic inequality, growth, and public policy. Her forthcoming book, Unbound: How Economic Inequality Constricts Our Economy and What We Can Do About It (Harvard University Press) will be released in October 2019. She is also the author of Finding Time: The Economics of Work-Life Conflict, and co-edited a volume of 22 essays about how to integrate inequality into economic thinking called After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality. The New York Times has called Boushey one of the “most vibrant voices in the field,” and Politico twice named her one of the top 50 “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics.” Boushey writes regularly for popular media, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Democracy Journal, and she makes frequent television appearances on Bloomberg, MSNBC, CNBC, and PBS. She previously served as chief economist for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential transition team and as an economist for the Center for American Progress, the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, and the Economic Policy Institute. She sits on the board of the Opportunity Institute and is an associate editor of Feminist Economics. She received her doctorate in economics from the New School for Social Research and her bachelor’s degree from Hampshire College.
Elena Chávez Quezada, Senior Director, Expanding Access to Opportunity, San Francisco Foundation, echavezquezada@sff.org
Elena Chavez Quezada is Senior Director for the People pathway at the San Francisco Foundation, where she oversees the foundation’s grantmaking focused on economic opportunity for low-income people of color. Before joining the San Francisco Foundation, Elena oversaw the economic security portfolio at the Walter and Elise Haas Fund and was a senior program officer at Tipping Point Community. Prior to her roles in philanthropy, she managed the California expansion of Single Stop USA and worked on research and policy at the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program. Elena is a founding partner for the Closing the Women’s Wealth Gap Initiative; co-chair of the Asset Funders Network; Head of Investments at the Chavez Family Foundation; and a Leadership Council Member of Immigrants Rising. She received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, and currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and two sons.
Rebecca Cokley, Director, Disability Justice Initiative, Center for American Progress, rcokley@americanprogress.org, @RebeccaCokley, @CAPDisability
Rebecca Cokley is the Director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. She joined CAP after wrapping up 4 years as the Executive Director of the National Council on Disability, an independent agency charged with advising Congress and the White House on issues of national disability public policy. She joined NCD in 2013 after serving 4 years in the Obama Administration including time at the Departments of Education, Health & Human Services, and a successful stint at the White House where she oversaw diversity and inclusion efforts. Rebecca got her feet wet in advocacy while working at the Institute for Educational Leadership for five years (04-09), building a number of tools and resources designed to empower and educate youth with disabilities and their adult allies. She has spent the last 15 years helping make stronger and deeper connections across civil rights communities and continues to see cross-movement solidarity as the only means of surviving these next years. Rebecca serves on the board of directors for Common Cause, the Community Justice Reform Coalition, and the ACLU of the National Capital Region. In 2017 she and her family were featured as part of CNN’s #ToBeMe series and she’s appeared in the Vox/Netflix series “Explained” and on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.” In 2015 she was inducted into the inaugural class of the Susan M. Daniels Disability Mentoring Hall of Fame and was the recipient of the Frank Harkin Memorial Award by the National Council on Independent Living. She is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Equity Fellow (2019-2020) and a Rockwood Leading from the Inside Out Fellow (2016-17). In 2008 she served on the leadership of the first ever Presidential Campaign Disability Policy Advisory Board, for then-Senator Barack Obama. She has spoken at numerous conferences and federal commissions including but not limited to Netroots Nation, New York City Comic-Con, Amazon, Google, and the U.S. Commission for Civil Rights. Rebecca has a B.A in Politics from the University of California Santa Cruz, is the proud spouse of Patrick and mother of Jackson, Kaya, and Kendrick, and is currently working on her first two books.
Erin Currier, Program Officer, Family Economic Security, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, erin.currier@wkkf.org
Erin Currier is a program officer for Family Economic Security at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in Battle Creek, Michigan. As a member of the Family Economic Security team, Erin is responsible for identifying and nurturing opportunities for affecting positive systemic change within communities, and executing programming efforts that align with the foundation’s strategic plan. She and the team advance grantmaking designed to further workforce mobility and financial stability for low-income families. Prior to joining the foundation, Erin served as director of the Financial Security and Mobility Project with The Pew Charitable Trusts in Washington, DC and as acting CEO with Women Work! The National Network for Women’s Employment. Erin has also served as public relations and outreach lead with Science Applications International Corporation and technical writer/program analyst at the Federal Aviation Administration with Subsystem Technologies, Inc., both in Washington, DC. Erin was named one of the 25 Most Influential Washington Women Under 35 by the National Journal and was awarded a Marano Fellowship from the Aspen Institute. She has served as a volunteer board member with Survivors and Advocates for Empowerment and the Domestic Violence Legal Empowerment and Appeals Project, both in Washington, D.C. Erin holds a master’s degree in public policy and women’s studies from George Washington University in Washington, D.C. and a bachelor’s degree in English and sociology from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Megan French-Marcelin, Fair Hiring Project Coordinator, JustLeadershipUSA, megan@jlusa.org, @MeganFMarcelin
Megan French-Marcelin serves as the Project Coordinator for JLUSA’s #WORKINGfuture Campaign which seeks to dismantle barriers to employment and other collateral consequences of mass incarceration for people with criminal records. Previously, she spearheaded the ACLU’s national reentry work, managing partnerships with corporations and workforce development agencies seeking to implement fair chance policies. Megan also worked with grassroots organizations in several states to draft legislation on occupational licensing, ban-the-box, and voting rights. Her analysis of legislative history was instrumental to enactment of new legislation spearheaded by VOTE-LA that restores voting rights to nearly 70,000 Louisianans on probation and parole. She has worked with criminal justice stakeholders across the country on issues ranging from sentencing reform to juvenile justice and holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University.
Fatima Goss Graves, President and CEO, National Women’s Law Center, fgraves@nwlc.org, @FGossGraves
Ms. Goss Graves has served in numerous roles at the National Women’s Law Center for more than a decade and has a distinguished track record working across a broad set of issues central to women’s lives—including income security, health and reproductive rights, education access, and workplace justice. Ms. Goss Graves is currently overseeing the Center’s administration of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund, which connects those who experience sexual misconduct including assault, harassment, abuse and related retaliation in the workplace or in trying to advance their careers with legal and public relations assistance. Prior to becoming CEO and President, she served as the Center’s Senior Vice President for Program, where she led the organization’s broad program agenda. Prior to that, as the Center’s Vice President for Education and Employment, she led the Center’s anti-discrimination initiatives, including work to promote equal pay, and address harassment and violence at work and in school, with a particular focus on outcomes for women and girls of color. She is widely recognized for her effectiveness in the complex public policy arena at both the state and federal levels, regularly testifies before Congress and federal agencies, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and other public education forums. Ms. Goss Graves appears often in print and on air as a legal expert on issues core to women’s lives, including in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, AP, Chicago Tribune, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, CNN, MSNBC, PBS and NPR.
Sarita Gupta, Director, Future of Work(ers), Ford Foundation, S.Gupta@fordfoundation.org
Sarita Gupta is the Director of the Future of Work(ers) Program at the Ford Foundation. She leads the team that oversees Ford’s efforts to actively shape a future of work that puts workers and their well-being at the center. Sarita joined the Ford Foundation with more than 20 years of experience working to expand people’s ability to come together to improve their workplaces, their communities, and their lives by creating solutions to the problems they face. She has deep expertise in policy advocacy, organizing, and building partnerships across the workers’ rights and care movements, having served as the Executive Director of Jobs With Justice and Co-Director of Caring Across Generations. She is a nationally recognized expert on the economic, labor, and political issues affecting working people, and is widely acknowledged as a key leader and strategist in the progressive movement. Sarita has played a key role in seeding numerous campaigns and efforts like the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, a global coalition of trade unions, workers’ rights and human rights organizations actively innovating regional initiatives for higher wages in the global garment industry; the Excluded Workers Congress, bringing together workers centers and organizations focused on raising labor standards and protections for low wage workers across industries; and Caring Across Generations, a national movement of families, caregivers, people with disabilities, and aging Americans working to transform the way we care in this country so that all families can live well and age with dignity. She is a Hunt Alternatives Fund Prime Movers Fellow as well as a graduate of the Rockwood Leadership Training Program. Among the awards Sarita has received are the National Women’s Law Center Annual Leadership Award, the Francis Perkins Open Door Award, a Mount Holyoke College Alumnae Achievement Award, and Corporate Ethics International’s BENNY Award. Born in the United Kingdom and raised in Rochester, NY, Sarita currently lives in Silver Spring, MD, with her husband and daughter. When she is not working, you can find her practicing yoga, reading mysteries or other great books, and coaching her 9-year old daughter’s soccer team.
Rob Hope, Initiative Officer, Bay Area Workforce Funders Collaborative, San Francisco Foundation, rhope@sff.org
Rob Hope is Initiative Officer for the Bay Area Workforce Funders Collaborative, an Initiative of the San Francisco Foundation. The Collaborative supports systems change efforts to make the Bay Area workforce development system more responsive to the strengths and needs of low wage workers. Rob is passionate about engaging in organizational and leadership transformation that creates more equitable and inclusive institutions and dismantles the systems of oppression that perpetuate a lack of opportunity, particularly for people of color, women, and LGBTQ people. He was previously Chief Program Officer at Rubicon Programs. Prior to joining Rubicon in 2009, Rob designed and managed re-entry and workforce development programs for formerly incarcerated people at Goodwill/Easter Seals Minnesota. Rob’s experience also includes program evaluation and policy analysis at the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, and community-building around prisoner re-entry issues at Urban Strategies Council in Oakland, CA. Rob has a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology from Vassar College and a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California-Berkeley. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Oakland, California.
Kosar Jahani, Program Officer, U.S. Economic Mobility & Opportunity, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, kosar.jahani@gatesfoundation.org
Kosar is a Program Officer with the Economic Mobility and Opportunity team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to joining the foundation, Kosar worked at the intersection of research and practice as Director of Impact in support of two workforce development initiatives, Samasource and Samaschool. Samasource is a leading social enterprise that employs low-income people from around the world to conduct digital job projects and lift themselves out of poverty through dignified work. Samaschool trains low-income Americans on how to leverage independent work to advance their professional goals. Kosar managed the design and implementation of the research and tools that both programs used to measure and understand their impact. This work built on her previous experience managing and analyzing data for economic and financial litigation at Cornerstone Research. Kosar earned her M.A. from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and holds a B.S. in Business Administration from UC Berkeley.
Saru Jayaraman, President, One Fair Wage, saru@rocunited.org, @sarujayaraman
Saru Jayaraman is the President of One Fair Wage, Co-Founder of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC United), and Director of the Food Labor Research Center at University of California, Berkeley. Saru is a graduate of Yale Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She was profiled in the New York Times “Public Lives” section in 2005, named one of Crain’s “40 Under 40” in 2008, was 1010 Wins’ “Newsmaker of the Year” and New York Magazine’s “Influentials” of New York City. She was listed in CNN’s “Top10 Visionary Women” and recognized as a Champion of Change by the White House in 2014, and a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award in 2015. Saru authored Behind the Kitchen Door (Cornell University Press, 2013), a national bestseller, and has appeared on CNN with Soledad O’Brien, Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, Melissa Harris Perry and UP with Chris Hayes on MSNBC, Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, the Today Show, and NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. Her most recent book is Forked: A New Standard for American Dining (Oxford University Press, 2016). She attended the Golden Globes in January 2018 with Amy Poehler as part of the Times Up action to address sexual harassment. In 2019, she was named the San Francisco Chronicle Visionary of the Year.
Josephine Kalipeni, Director of Policy and Federal Affairs, Caring Across Generations, josie@caringacross.org
Josephine’s expertise includes asset-based grassroots and faith organizing, public speaking, and policy development for issues-based campaigns in health, education, and international affairs, with a focus on racial and economic equity. Josephine initially worked in family case management and social work, assisting families navigating various public systems. Seeing firsthand the limitations and opportunities of social programs, she has worked to increase health access through public social policy for children and families. Josephine has provided technical and policy assistance to state organizations working on progressive policy and researched and developed state and national policy. Josephine has worked to increase health access through public social policy, with a focus on Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. Josephine focuses on public policy benefit design and issues campaigns development through community-based organizations. Josephine values developing policy through a collective impact and asset-based model that centers the experiences of those most impacted by the issue as the experts of formulating a solution. She has worked with organizations like the NAACP, Illinois Black Chamber of Commerce, Progressive Action for the Common Good, and Families USA. Josephine holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology with a concentration in political science and religious studies from the University of Illinois, a Mental Health Professional (MHP) certificate, and a Masters in Social Justice and Community Development with an expertise in global and health policy from Loyola University in Chicago. She is currently the Director of Policy and Federal Affairs at Caring Across Generations leading the work to develop state and federal policies of universal long-term and home and community based care.
Ami Nagle, Co-Director, Economic Opportunity Funders, anagle@eofnetwork.org
Ami Nagle is President of Nagle & Associates, a national consulting firm focusing on three areas: consultation and support to innovative charitable foundations, public policy analysis and field research for non-profits and government agencies, and evaluation of community programs. She is also Co-Director of EOF, and Coordinator for the EITC Funders Network and Children Youth and Family Funders Roundtable. Throughout her career, Ms. Nagle has conducted strategic planning and initiative development authored numerous research and policy reports, implemented surveys, conducted focus groups, designed public information campaigns, and gathered data for a variety of private- and public-sector sponsored studies of human service, economic security, civic engagement, and education issues. Before founding Nagle & Associates, Ms. Nagle headed several major research and public education projects for Voices for Illinois Children and the Illinois Facilities Fund. She holds a master’s degree from Loyola University of Chicago (1994), where she was trained in research relating to family and child welfare, urban poverty, and nonprofit administration.
Palak Shah, Founding Director of NWDA Labs and Social Innovations Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance, palak@domesticworkers.org, @palaknshah, @domesticworkers
Palak Shah is the Social Innovations Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), the nation’s leading organization working for the power, respect, and dignity of the 2.5 million nannies, housekeepers, and caregivers in the U.S. She is also the Founding Director of NDWA Labs, the innovation arm of the domestic worker movement. Palak is a leader in the movement for workers’ rights in the new economy, a thought leader on the future of work, and a social entrepreneur. Her groundbreaking work at NDWA wrestles with the ways in which technology can be harnessed for the benefit of workers, placing them at the center of innovation and change. In 2018, NDWA Labs launched Alia, the nation’s first portable benefits platform that finally expands the social safety net to independent workers, starting with domestic workers. Palak is currently a Beck Visiting Social Innovator at the Harvard Kennedy School where she is leading an effort to develop a 21st century policy framework to address the privatization and digitization of the labor markets. She also currently serves on the Advisory Council for the Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy, as well as the Institute for the Future’s Equitable Futures Lab. She previously served as a Job Quality Fellow with the Aspen Institute.
Aimée-Josiane Twagirumukiza, Vice President, The National LGBTQ Workers Center, atwagiru@gmail.com
Aimée-Josiane Twagirumukiza (she & they pronouns) is a founding member and the Vice President of the National LGBTQ Workers Center, which works to ensure that all LGBTQ+ people know and fight for their rights as workers. Aimée-Josiane is also a certified professional coach with roots in community and labor organizing whose calling is to support the lives and leadership of queer & trans, Black/ indigenous/ people of color (QTBIPOC). They are a Rwandan refugee turned Georgia peach, with over a decade of experience in building power with public-sector workers (via the AFL-CIO, ATU, CWA and AFT), as well as with other Black immigrants, low-income housing tenants, and QTBIPOC survivors of violence. They also currently lead the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s We Dream In Black organizing initiative which builds power for Black domestic workers across the US. Aimée-Josiane resides in East Point, GA with their journalist wife, Neesha, and chubby black cat, Queen Seven. Together they have driven across the US twice, and spend most evenings enjoying living room karaoke, cooking outside of the box and watching an embarrassing amount of reality television.
Manisha Vaze, Senior Program Manager, Funders for a Just Economy, Neighborhood Funders Group, manisha@nfg.org
Manisha manages the strategy and programming for the Neighborhood Funders Group’s Funders for a Just Economy (FJE) program. FJE is a national network of funders interested in building the power of workers and low-income and low wealth communities, supporting the workers’ rights movement, and advocating for a progressive economic agenda that moves us toward racial, gender, migrant, and economic justice. Before joining NFG in February 2017, Manisha was the director of organizing at Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE) based in South Los Angeles. A seasoned organizer, she was previously the senior organizer at Families for Freedom (FFF), a New York City-based community organization by and for families facing deportation due to an interaction with the criminal system. Manisha also has experience in mental health program development and policy advocacy and served as the follow-up coordinator at the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a Masters in Social Work from Columbia University. She serves on the board of Progressive Technology Project.
Anna Wadia, Senior Program Officer, Future of Work(ers), Ford Foundation, A.Wadia@fordfoundation.org
Anna Shireen Wadia is a senior program officer in the foundation’s Future of Work(ers) program, which seeks to ensure that there is a meaningful future of work that places workers and their well-being at the center. Anna has been with Ford since 2009. Her grant making has focused on improving economic security and the quality of jobs for low-wage workers and their families by supporting efforts to raise the minimum wage, guarantee paid sick days, and develop new paid family and medical leave programs. Anna was previously a consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Ms. Foundation for Women, the National Council for Research on Women, and MDRC. Prior to launching her consulting business, she was co-director of programs for the Ms. Foundation for Women, where she managed a funder collaborative focused on women’s economic development. Earlier in her career, she carried out community and economic development programming for the Ford Foundation and Catholic Relief Services in Africa. Anna co-authored Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs: How Eleven Women Escaped Poverty and Became Their Own Bosses (Westview, 2002), as well as several reports on best practices in grant making and women’s economic empowerment. Anna holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University.
Tanya Wallace-Gobern, Executive Director, National Black Worker Center Project, twgobern@nationalblackworkercenters.org
Tanya Wallace-Gobern became the Executive Director of the National Black Worker Center Project in June 2016. She brings over 20 years of experience in labor and community organizing. Tanya began her career immediately following college graduation, when she joined the Organizing Institute of the AFL-CIO. Soon after that, her desire to organize Black workers led her to work for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU — a predecessor union of Unite HERE) and move to the Southeast to help on their unionization campaign in that region. Later, she created the AFL-CIO’s Historical Black College Recruitment program in order to increase the number of Blacks among union leadership and staff. For the past 10 years, Tanya has been working for the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions including running their field operation.
Felicia Wong, President and CEO, Roosevelt Institute, fwong@rooseveltinstitute.org
Felicia Wong is the President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, a New York-based think tank and campus network that promotes a bold economic and political vision capable of bringing the ideals of Franklin and Eleanor into the 21st century. She helps lead the Roosevelt Institute’s work on a rewriting the rules agenda, a comprehensive economic program and narrative that has become increasingly influential. She is the co-author of The Hidden Rules of Race: Barriers to an Inclusive Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, and the Boston Review. Felicia came to the Institute from the Democracy Alliance, and previously ran operations and product development at a venture-funded education services company. Her public service includes a White House Fellowship in the Office of the Attorney General and a political appointment in the Office of the Secretary of the Navy. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Berkeley. Her doctoral dissertation on the role of race and framing in K-12 public education politics received the 2000 American Political Science Association award in Race, Ethnicity, and Politics.
