Rockwood is proud to announce our 2019-2020 National Leading from the Inside Out (LIO) Yearlong Fellows!
Each year, Rockwood selects a cohort of nationally recognized leaders to participate in a transformative yearlong fellowship. Since 2003, this executive leadership program has emerged as one of the nation’s leading learning laboratories for experienced social change leaders.
National LIO Yearlong fellows must be nominated in order to apply for the fellowship, and the extensive selection process takes into account a great number of factors, including Rockwood’s commitment to building connections between leaders who are diverse in methodology, issue focus, geography, and personal experience and identity.
The 2019-2020 National LIO Yearlong Fellows are:
Adrian leads United We Dream Action’s national political strategy. Adrian has lead United We Dream’s (UWD) groundbreaking technology, digital engagement and communications strategies. Under his leadership, the network has led teams to defeat anti-immigrants in office in California, New Mexico, and Texas; created new technology to help low income community organizers provide service and empowerment opportunities to immigrant youth and families, and has catapulted the digital presence of UWD – tripling the size of their online community. Born in Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, Adrian came to the U.S. with his parents at the age of 12 and grew up undocumented in Humble, TX, outside of Houston. In college, Adrian “came out” as undocumented and queer and has dedicated his life to helping others live as their full and authentic selves. Adrian now directs one of UWD’s largest staff teams where he brings his vision of a connected and vibrant network of formerly isolated and disempowered people into reality every day. Since the Trump administration rescinded DACA on September 5th, Adrian has led the campaign for a permanent legislative solution, the Dream Act. Adrian will lead UWD’s largest political operation yet in 10 states for the 2020 elections.
Alexis has been an activist since she was a college student. Driven by the disparities in educational opportunity she encountered growing up in Wisconsin, she co-founded Youth Reclaiming Our Communities (Youth ROC), which mobilizes students across the state to press for education finance reform. Since then, she’s continued working towards a vision of a more inclusive and more equitable society. She has dedicated her career to community organizing, coalition building, public policy, and strategic planning, exemplified by her work on issues of racial and gender equity and the politics of power and privilege. Before joining State Voices’, Alexis served as the deputy director of the Funders’ Committee for Civic Participation and as the executive director of Wisconsin Voices, where she worked to expand and defend voting rights in the state. Alexis graduated with honors from Alverno College with a degree in history and political science, and is completing a Master of Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Alexis serves on the boards of the Alliance for Youth Organizing and the Analyst Institute. When not at work, she can be found trying out new recipes for family and friends and traveling with her husband, Derek.
Ash-Lee is a 34 year old, Affrilachian (Black Appalachian), working class woman, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee. Ash-Lee is the first black woman executive director of the Highlander Research & Education Center, a social justice leadership training school and cultural center founded in 1932. Through popular education, language justice, participatory research, cultural work, and intergenerational organizing, they help create spaces — at Highlander and in communities — where people gain knowledge, hope and courage, expanding their ideas of what is possible. Ash-Lee is a long-time activist working against environmental racism in central and southern Appalachia, and has fought for worker’s rights, racial justice, women and LGBTQUIA+ rights, reproductive justice, international human rights, and led-intergenerational social movements across the South. She serves on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly and is a nationally recognized leader in the Movement for Black Lives.
Becky joined NAKASEC’s staff as Co-Director in January 2017. Previously, she was the program manager of the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, a national initiative that supports the year round civic engagement efforts of Asian American organizations, and an independent consultant for community-based organizations and foundations in the greater Chicago area. She also worked as lead program officer for the Woods Fund Chicago where she coordinated grantmaking and special projects. Becky spent 15 years as a community and labor organizer. She has served as the executive director of the Korean American Resource & Cultural Center (KRCC), the Midwest regional coordinator for the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and is the co-director of Adoptees for Justice. She serves on the boards of the HANA Center, Ella Baker Organizing Fund and BYP100 Education Fund. Becky enjoys spending time with her daughter and identifies as a Korean adoptee.
Brigid is the co-founder and co-director of Down Home North Carolina, a grassroots organization building power for working communities in rural and small town North Carolina. She was most recently the organizing director of ALIGN, where she led winning policy campaigns at the city level that strengthened standards for 4,000 commercial sanitation workers as well as improving public health for three overburdened low-income and people of color districts; drove labor-community coalition mobilizations around Fight for 15 and various Wall Street actions. Prior to ALIGN, she worked for seven years at the Pushback Network where she eventually served as executive director. At Pushback, she worked with the Board to drive strategic planning and fundraising for a national network of eight states that were building power with people of color and low income community organizations through state-based integrated civic engagement programs.
Educate, Motivate, Inspire – Change the world! This the philosophy Chinyere lives by. Cali born with southern roots, Chinyere is a Black organizer, educator, trainer, and direct action strategist. She is a founding member and current co-director of The BlackOUT Collective, a black direct action training and support organization, that believes strategic direct action is not only necessary for people to win real transformative change but that it is a healing and transformative practice. Chinyere is dedicated to the liberation of Black people and all oppressed people and it is her deep love of people that grounds her work and her approach to life. Chinyere spent years training and developing young people in organizing and media skills and still serves as a coach and mentor to new organizers and organizations. On any day of the week, you can find her sitting with a cup of hot tea and listening to the wonders of a Spotify playlist while plotting for collective freedom.
Cortney is the executive director of Pantsuit Nation, a nonprofit organization that uses storytelling to build the foundation for a more equitable and engaged democracy. Pantsuit Nation is a founding organizational partner of Supermajority, a nonprofit founded to provide women with the tools, resources, and knowledge they need to channel their energy and activism into creating true gender equity. Before joining the Pantsuit Nation team, Cortney worked in executive search for mission-driven organizations at Isaacson, Miller, student affairs and library systems at Wheelock College, and museum education at MASS MoCA in North Adams, MA. She has a BA from Williams College, an MA from the University of Chicago, and an MBA from Boston University.
A national expert on the relationship between hate violence and preserving democratic institutions, governance, and inclusive societies, Eric brings nearly 30 years of expertise in community organizing and philanthropy to his role as Western States Center’s executive director. Since his civil rights career began in the late 1980s, Eric has worked with community groups, government and business leaders, and human rights advocates throughout the country to expose and counter white nationalist hate groups, protect vulnerable communities, and make our democracy more inclusive. In addition to his work at Western States Center, Eric is the co-founder of Funders For Justice and serves as a board member for The Proteus Fund and Revolutions Per Minute (RPM), a nonprofit agency that provides artists with strategy and support for their activism and philanthropy. A contributor to the Progressive Media Project from 2008 to 2014, Eric has been quoted and cited extensively by national media and is the author of multiple written works including “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism.”
Francys has been serving Indian Country for well over a decade. She has served in various capacities from clerking for Tribal supreme courts and working for the United Nations Special Rapporteur for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to representing Tribes as in-house counsel and special prosecutor. She joined the Indian healthcare field in 2015 to advocate for better healthcare in Indian Country as well as educate Tribal members and communities on their alternative healthcare options. She joined NCUIH in 2016 as the Policy Analyst and Congressional Relations Liaison and later became the Director of Governmental Affairs. She became NCUIH’s executive director in August 2017. Francys received her J.D. from University of Arizona Law with a Certificate in Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy and her BA in public administration from Florida International University.
Jessie has dedicated his career to building a unified progressive movement where everyone can fully enjoy the abundance that this country has historically offered to so few. For the last 18 years, Jessie has worked in the progressive movement at the local, state, and federal levels as a Colorado State Senator, senior nonprofit executive, trainer, and community organizer, and currently as the executive director of the State Innovation Exchange (SiX). He has passed hundreds of economic, racial, and gender justice policies into state law (including wage theft protections, pregnancy accommodations, election modernization, driver’s licenses for undocumented residents, and Colorado’s largest investment in affordable housing) and has trained thousands of progressive activists, campaign managers, and elected officials across the United States. Since SiX’s inception, Jessie has partnered closely with the organization to develop the capacity of state legislators to build progressive governing power nationwide. He now resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his husband and daughter.
Josh has worked for a decade in progressive politics. He started in democratic campaigns where he worked in roles ranging from campaign manager on a Chicago Alderman’s race to managing the field and data departments on a DSCC targeted Senate campaign. He also has extensive experience in movement politics, working as the organizing director on Minnesotans United, one of the four ballot initiatives that first won on marriage equality in 2012; as senior advisor to an NGO that worked with female activists in urban India to combat sexual harassment and assault in dozens of cities; running the organizing efforts for a national gun violence prevention effort across the Southern United States; and serving as an early senior advisor to Indivisible. Josh founded and currently serves as CEO of The Movement Cooperative, a member-led nonprofit cooperative of 48 national and 500 state-based progressive organizations that cooperatively secures access to high-impact data and technology resources and invests in collective staff, infrastructure, and communities of practice across its membership.
Kamal is deputy director of the National Immigration Law Center. In this role, he is responsible for overseeing the execution of all of the organization’s programmatic activities, ranging from lawsuits to policy advocacy to strategic communications plans. Kamal previously served as director of policy and advocacy, where he spearheaded integration of the organization’s federal, state and local policy work and also played a key leadership role on the development of the organization’s strategic framework. Kamal joined NILC in 2012 as a staff attorney. Prior to his employment at NILC, Kamal practiced immigration law in New York City. An immigrant from Morocco, Kamal is deeply familiar with the personal and policy implications of major immigration measures. He currently resides in Maryland with his spouse and two children.
Katherine is partner at Civitas Public Affairs Group. With over 20 years of policy, legal, and advocacy experience Katherine is a leading thought leader on gender, race and sexuality. A lawyer by training, Katherine has a unique ability to combine big-picture vision with real-world solutions to generate tangible results. Katherine spent several years working in New York state government, which she describes as a master class in learning how to build, harness and generate power. As assistant counsel in civil rights to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, Katherine was responsible for crafting and implementing several major legislative initiatives, including the Marriage Equality Act. One of Katherine’s greatest honors is teaching the next generation of policy makers, as an adjunct professor at Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. While she is more often than not on the road, Katherine loves nothing more than being home in her beloved New York City.
Kat is the founder and executive director of Spread the Vote. A lawyer, activist, and social entrepreneur, Kat has built a national organization that helps Americans obtain the IDs they need for jobs, housing, and life and that also allows them to go to the polls. Along with STV, Kat is an advisor to Ragtag, sits on the board of California Women’s List, and writes about politics and how liberals can do better. Kat is one of the 2018 Fast Company 100 Most Creative People in Business and has been a Business Insider 30 Under 30, The Grio 100, and more. Kat has been featured on PBS’ To The Contrary, BET’s Black History Month profiles, has been a guest commentator on Sirius XM, and has been featured in numerous print and digital outlets. Kat attended Mount Holyoke College and the University of Michigan Law School. She is an Army brat mostly from Seattle and Sierra Vista, AZ and currently lives in Los Angeles.
Kendra joined Equality North Carolina in May 2018. She is a native of Little Rock, Arkansas, where she previously worked to advance fairness and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people right as the state director for the Human Rights Campaign. Kendra has been a lifelong volunteer and activist, including founding the first lesbian/bi-sexual support group at Spelman College in the 90s and volunteering communications services for Brazil’s first historically black college. She currently serves as the board chair for Southerners on New Ground (SONG), the largest grassroots LGBTQ organization in the South. She previously worked in bi-lingual communications in Brazil for 14 years as a writer, editor and translator at that country’s top financial newspapers, Gazeta Mercantil and Valor Economico. Kendra is a proud graduate of Spelman College and holds a master’s degree in public administration from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Since returning to the nonprofit sector, Kendra has served as the interim executive director of Women’s Project and the Lead In-Person Assister Guide at Better Community Development during the rollout of the Affordable Care Act.
Lorella is a freedom fighter, movement builder, and adaptive athlete. She is the President of Community Change Action and Vice President of Community Change. Lorella is passionate about building collective power to win transformative policy change at all levels of government, so that people can thrive. Most recently, she was the ACLU’s Deputy National Political Director, where she fought to defend and expand the rights of immigrants and refugees. Prior to joining the ACLU, Lorella mobilized the Latinx vote as Hillary Clinton’s National Latino Vote Director. Lorella moved from Peru to Connecticut with her family at the age of ten. Her life was transformed after coming out as “undocumented and unafraid” and organizing undocumented students to step into their power in Connecticut. She then served as United We Dream’s Director of Advocacy and Policy, where she led the campaign to implement DACA and was part of the team that persuaded the Obama administration to protect four million undocumented Americans through DAPA. Lorella is a proud Latina who believes that we will win.
Maegan is the new director of Make the Road Pennsylvania (MRPA). Maegan has been with MRPA since the spring of 2017, and she has already played a critical role in MRPA’s success; for example, she helped get the Allentown organizing center off the ground and led a successful police accountability campaign after Joey Santos, an unarmed Latino man, was killed by a police officer last summer. As Deputy Director, she has been overseeing MRPA’s three organizing centers, in Reading, Allentown and Philadelphia, and has effectively been leading the organization since the departure of MRPA’s previous director last November. Maegan was born in New York, the child of immigrants from Peru. She has a bachelor’s degree in social work from Cedar Crest College and currently resides in the Lehigh Valley of PA.
Mark is a digital strategist and community organizer with local and national experience. After running a web development firm for five years, Mark led communications at Chicago’s Inner-City Muslim Action Network, and then ran several digital programs at Obama 2012. Mark is a co-founder, with Linda Sarsour and Dustin Craun, of MPower Change, a rapid-response campaigning organization mobilizing Muslims and their allies, as well as the executive director of Dream of Detroit, combining community organizing and development on Detroit’s Westside. At MoveOn, Mark serves as Mobile Innovation Director and Senior Strategist, overseeing implementation of new mobile technologies across the organization. He’s worked on successful campaigns to prevent U.S. military intervention in Syria, expand Medicaid access in GOP-led states, and take down the Confederate flag in South Carolina. Mark has been featured in publications including The Detroit Free Press, The Nation, and The Guardian.
Maurice is a nationally-recognized social movement strategist and organizer for racial, social, and economic justice. Raised by Caribbean working-class parents in NY, Maurice began organizing as a teenager. After graduating from Howard University, he went on to work as an organizer for the Long Island Progressive Coalition, downstate organizing director for Citizen Action of NY, and director of the NY State Civic Engagement Table. After Mike Brown was killed by police in Missouri, Maurice relocated to Ferguson to support work on the ground. Seeing the need for an anchor organization to provide strategic support and guidance to Movement for Black Lives activists, Maurice co-founded and managed Blackbird. In 2015, he helped organize the Movement for Black Lives convention in Cleveland. In 2018, Maurice took the helm of Working Families Party as national director where he is applying his passion and experience to grow WFP into an authentic multi-racial populist party.
Mónica is a long-time advocate, organizer, and attorney. In 2003, Mónica created the first legal project in the U.S. specifically focused on addressing gender discrimination against farmworker women, which she later expanded in 2006 when she founded Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In 2011, she co-founded Alianza Nacional de Campesinas. In her role as Alianza’s board president, Mónica wrote the “Dear Sisters” letter to women in the entertainment industry that was published in TIME magazine that was credited in helping to spark the launch of TIME’S UP. In 2014 she founded Justice for Migrant Women and currently serves as the President of Justice for Migrant Women and the Gender Justice Campaigns Director for National Domestic Workers Alliance. Mónica has received numerous awards for her leadership, including Harvard Kennedy School’s first Gender Equity Changemaker Award, Feminist Majority’s Global Women’s Rights Award, the Smithsonian’s Ingenuity Award and Forbes Mexico named her among the 100 Most Powerful Women in 2018. Mónica was born, raised and lives in Fremont, Ohio. She is married to Scott Derome. Mónica and Scott are the parents to an inquisitive, kind and energetic son.
Purvi is an experienced movement lawyer, civil-rights litigator, policy advocate and law professor. After a decade of providing legal support to grassroots movements, Purvi founded Movement Law Lab to build a new generation of legal organizations and lawyers with the skills, know-how and vision to use law to create social change. She co-founded Law For Black Lives, a national network of 3,400 lawyers dedicated to supporting the Movement For Black Lives, founded in the aftermath of the Ferguson and Baltimore uprisings. She also co-founded the Community Justice Project at Florida Legal Services where she litigated for six years on behalf of taxi drivers, tenant unions, public housing residents, and immigrants. Purvi also previously worked at the Center for Constitutional Rights where she directed the Bertha Justice Institute, the nation’s first training institute dedicated to advancing movement lawyering across the United States and the world. Through the Institute, Purvi trained hundreds of lawyers and law students on how to use law to create social change. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and the Berkeley School of Law at the University of California.
Rebecca is a senior fellow and senior adviser at the Center for American Progress, where she has spent the past five years helping to build and lead CAP’s poverty program, in a range of roles including as the program’s vice president, and helping to launch the institution’s criminal justice reform and disability justice programs. She co-developed the “clean slate” model of automated criminal record-clearing that became law in Pennsylvania in 2018 and is now spreading to states across the U.S., enabling millions of individuals to have a fair shot at jobs and housing. Forever a legal aid lawyer at heart, Rebecca represented low-income individuals and families at Community Legal Services in Philadelphia, where she began her work as a Skadden Fellow. A noted speaker and frequent commentator on poverty issues, Rebecca has appeared on numerous television and radio outlets, authored a wide range of briefs and articles, and regularly testifies before Congress. She also hosts Off-Kilter, a radio show/podcast about poverty and inequality. Rebecca received her law degree from the University of Virginia, where she was elected Order of the Coif, and her bachelor’s degree from Emory University. She serves on the board of the National Academy of Social Insurance and was twice recognized in Forbes’ “30 Under 30” for Law & Policy, as well as Emory University’s “40 Under 40.” In a past life, she was an operatically-trained mezzo soprano.
Sharon is the president and CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, a multigenerational family foundation, rooted in the Jewish tradition of social justice, working to create a more just, vibrant, sustainable, and democratic society. She joined in 2015, and during her time as the first female CEO, the foundation redefined its model from grantmaker to changemaker, using all of its resources for impact. She worked with the board to commit 100% of its endowment to mission-aligned investing, increased the payout to frontline groups to address threats to democratic ideals, and has used her and the foundation’s voice to sound the alarm about the rise of white nationalism and the need to practice radical solidarity. Prior, Sharon served as the vice president of programs and strategic initiatives at the Surdna Foundation. Her philanthropic career started at the Ford Foundation following a decade of work in the nonprofit sector in the fields of environmental justice, housing, and community organizing. Sharon holds an MPA and BA resource and managerial economics from Cornell University.
Sondra has more than 25 years of experience as an organizer with grassroots groups and low-income constituencies. She is currently the campaigns director for People’s Action, supporting and driving campaign work around housing, healthcare, climate and the future of work(ers). Prior to joining the People’s Action team, she worked with the People’s Climate Movement, helping coordinate their April 2017 mass mobilization in DC; then coordinating a dialogue with mass-based resistance groups to reflect on learnings from early resistance work; and finally working to develop multi-sectoral collaborative partnerships & plans in key states. Her formative organizing time was spent at Community Voices Heard, a membership organization of low-income NYers that organize to influence policy change, where she focused on building campaigns around welfare & workforce development, public housing improvement & preservation, civic engagement & participatory democracy, and more. As executive director, she helped grow CVH from a one city, one issue shop into a multi-chapter, multi-issue organization.
Steven is the co-director of MediaJustice, a national racial justice hub fighting for a future in which people of color are connected, represented, and free. As MediaJustice’s long time campaign director, he has led a number of high profile campaigns like the Campaign for Prison Phone Justice which lowered the cost of prison phone calls nationwide. Steven also led efforts to win the nation’s strongest Net Neutrality rules, blocked the mergers of Comcast Time-Warner and pressured Facebook to ban white nationalists on their platform. Steven came to the organization through the MediaJustice Network, helping recruit and grow the network to its current size of over 100 member organizations. A native of Los Angeles, Steven grew up in an immigrant household at the height of anti-immigrant fervor in California. The propaganda campaign that fueled the passage of Proposition 187 in the mid-90s, motivated Steven to seek out a career to challenge media bias and democratize communications for immigrants, people of color and other communities at the margins. He’s the co-founder of Radio Pocho, a DJ collective in Minneapolis, MN which seeks to reclaim cultural roots through music.
Tonya is the president & CEO of The Skillman Foundation. Her two-decade-long career has centered on pursuing, executing and investing in ideas that improve her hometown of Detroit and increase opportunities for its people, particularly its children, who live in under-resourced communities. Tonya has been instrumental in many successful philanthropic, government and community initiatives, including: the 11-year, $120-million Good Neighborhoods Initiative; co-chairing the Coalition for the Future of Detroit school children and Launch Michigan; and serving as a leader in the boys and men of color field. Tonya holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology and master’s degrees in social work and public health from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She serves on numerous boards including Oakland University, Council on Foundations, Council of Michigan Foundations, United Way for Southeastern Michigan, and Campaign for Black Male Achievement.
Vanessa is the founder and executive director of Groundswell Fund, the largest funder of the U.S. reproductive justice movement and of Groundswell Action Fund, the largest fund in the country centering giving to women of color-led 501c4 organizations. Under her leadership, Groundswell has moved more than $50M to the field, with a focus on intersectional grassroots organizing led by women of color (90% of its giving), low-income women and transgender people of color. In 2017, Groundswell received the National Committee for Responsible Philanthropy’s “Impact Award” for smashing issue silos and Vanessa was featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy as one of 15 “Influencers” who are changing the non-profit world. She is the recipient of the Gerbode Foundation Fellowship, and the National Network of Abortion Funds’ Abortion Action Vanguard Award. Prior to Groundswell, Vanessa organized homecare workers with SEIU; helped win a landmark living wage law with the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy; and conducted research to support the organizing efforts of welfare mothers with Race Forward.
Wendy is co-director of Family Values @ Work, a network of coalitions in 27 states working to win policies such as family & medical leave insurance and paid sick & safe days. Recognizing the ways in which her own family would be excluded from new policies for paid time to care, Wendy spearheaded the development of the Family Justice Network, a cross-movement initiative that has made inclusive family recognition a hallmark of the paid leave movement. A skilled coalition builder, Wendy’s built a culture of peer learning across FV@W’s national network, guided states in developing diverse coalitions and is committed to supporting leadership of women of color. Wendy has fought for economic justice from within foundations, community-based organizations and government. She is a frequent speaker at conferences around the country, and serves on the boards of the National Employment Law Project and the Consumer Health Foundation. An avid soccer player, Wendy lives with her wife and their two young sons in Silver Spring, Maryland.
