Sara Cullinane, Director, Make the Road New Jersey
Sara Cullinane, Esq. is Director of Make the Road New Jersey (MRNJ) and Make the Road Action-NJ. Founded in late 2014, MRNJ is a multi-issue, membership based organization that builds the power of immigrant and working class communities of color to achieve respect and dignity through community organizing, the provision of legal and support services, policy innovation and transformative education. MRNJ has won more than eighteen campaigns that have helped more than one million immigrant and working class New Jerseyans out of poverty, including drivers licenses and occupational licenses for undocumented immigrants, a $15+ minimum wage that includes youth workers, local rent control ordinances, the strongest anti-wage theft and temp worker protections in the country, and the nation’s first guaranteed severance law. Our community centers in Elizabeth, Passaic and Perth Amboy provide legal representation, health, education and youth development services to tens of thousands of families each year. Recently, MRNJ led the campaign to successfully stop a massive Amazon Air Hub at the Newark Airport and to win a historic $110 million investment in cash assistance for excluded workers during the pandemic.Before helping to found MRNJ in 2014, Sara worked as a union organizer, and was a staff attorney and Equal Justice Works fellow and health advocate at Make the Road New York. She has also taught at the New York University Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She holds a JD from NYU School of Law, where she was a Root-Tilden-Kern public service scholar. Sara served as Co-Chair of the Law and Justice Committee on Governor Murphy’s Transition Team and a Commissioner of the New Jersey 2020 Complete Count Census Commission.
Follow and support Make the Road New Jersey’s work @MaketheRoadNJ and www.maketheroadnj.org.