Deborah Axt is a coach and strategy consultant to movement organizations and their leaders. Her imperative is to help build a multi-racial ecosystem of bold people's organizations grounded in love and belonging. After a previous life as a union organizer, Deb spent two decades helping to build the membership-based Make the Road New York, its sister C4 Make the Road Action, and eventually second generation Make the Road organizations across the country. In her roles as attorney, legal director, and then Co-Executive Director, Deb helped lead two mergers, three executive leadership transitions, a $30m capital campaign, and the building of a shared national infrastructure. Meanwhile, she led impact litigation, services, and economic justice and worker organizing. She has co-led dozens of campaigns, like those that blocked Amazon from building its "HQ2" in New York, and established a $2.1 billion Excluded Workers fund to support New Yorkers barred from unemployment and COVID relief. She is mom to Elijah and Zoe.

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Adriana Barboza, Partner at The Management Center, is passionate about social justice, race and gender equity, and building power through organizing, training, and great management. She was most recently the Vice President of Program Strategy and Partnerships at Re:Power (formerly Wellstone). She has over 18 years of experience in community organizing, training, and providing technical support to groups working on electoral efforts and in the democracy field. Adriana has provided technical assistance to the frontline groups engaged in fighting for judicial independence, expanding democracy, protecting voting rights, and redistricting. Adriana has also provided strategic support in designing and delivering partnership-based training and programs for leading civic engagement organizations and coalitions. Adriana was born in Jalisco, Mexico and grew up on the South Side of Chicago. She holds a law degree from Depaul University and a Bachelor's from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When she is not on the road, she loves to plan her next trip and spend quality time with her fashionable and photogenic dog Pikete.

Sebastian Barreneche is a skilled marketing and fundraising professional with over a decade of experience leading creative campaigns and managing effective social impact projects. As a consultant for NLA, Sebastian leads and supports communications and fundraising efforts to drive growth and maximize impact.

Sebastian's expertise in content creation and fundraising strategy played a pivotal role in managing institutional giving relationships and grant production for United We Dream, the largest immigrant youth-led organization in the nation. And at Make the Road New York, the largest grassroots progressive organization in the Northeastern U.S., Sebastian's creative digital campaigns and project management skills helped drive successful fundraising and advocacy efforts for over 5 years.

With a diverse skill set that includes experience in social entrepreneurship, graphic design, and both digital and traditional media, Sebastian is a results-oriented professional with a deep commitment to community development. He strongly believes in mobilizing resources and investing in access and opportunity for our communities to build power with resilient joy and creativity.

Karla is an independent consultant with more than 12 years experience as a fundraiser, organizer, event planner and strategist who works with justice and equity-focused organizations and individuals to build and strategize their fundraising operation. A proud former canvasser, her entrance into the world of organizing and fundraising began more than a decade ago, doing door-to-door fundraising for issue campaigns in New York. She has a deep knowledge of the progressive organizing landscape as a result of her work in electoral and issue-driven fundraising and organizing at the New York Working Families Party, as staff at Make the Road New York and working with Movement Voter Project, Local Progress, and others. Originally from Saint Paul, MN, she spent twelve years outside of the Twin Cities, living in France and New York City. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in French and Global Studies from the University of Minnesota. Karla lives in Minneapolis, where she regularly walks miles around lakes and along creeks and rivers with her spouse and two children.

Jay Carmona is an engagement, strategy, and base-building expert specializing in online-to-field strategies and decentralized organizing. After graduating with a degree in community organizing Jay went on to spend two decades working for progressive causes from the streets to the halls of Congress. With a career focus on stopping climate change, bringing decision making back to impacted communities, and technology-enhanced organizing spaces, Jay consults full time at their firm, Sematonic Strategies. Jay believes in passing on skills and knowledge to support the biggest and most engaged social justice communities and also takes training and coaching clients. Jay is neurodivergent and likes dogs, science fiction, and spending time outdoors.

Brittaney is a communications strategist with 15 years of experience in writing, editing, and publishing and 7 years of experience mobilizing communities for racial and economic justice. Her passion is using narrative tools to translate public policy and program design in the service of social change. Originally from rural South Georgia, she now calls the San Francisco Bay Area home. When she's not using storytelling to engage audiences in the large and small ways we can fight for justice daily, Brittaney is probably taking a lazy stroll with her seven-pound chihuahua, Ramona. Brittaney earned a Master of Public Policy degree from UC Berkeley and bachelor's degrees in Journalism and Spanish from the University of Georgia.

Erika is a consultant focused on racial equity within nonprofit operations, fundraising, and organizational culture, with an emphasis on inclusion and employee happiness. Erika is a co-founding member of the Community-Centric Fundraising movement. They also recently volunteered their time as the Appeals Chair for the Seattle Human Rights Commission and as Vice President of Equitable Policies for AFP Advancement NW. Erika holds a Bachelors of Business Administration from the University of Miami with a major in Economics and minors in International Business and Spanish. She also holds a Masters of Public Administration and Certificate in Nonprofit Management from the University of Washington Evans School of Public Policy & Governance.

Bobby Clark is an independent consultant who advises funders and nonprofits on systemic communications investments, including opinion research, narrative development, and communications capacities and structures, as well as state and national issue campaigns. Previously, Bobby served as Vice President for Communications and Programs at Gill Foundation, the nation’s largest investor in LGBTQ equality work. At Gill Foundation, Bobby helped lead investments to drive the public imperative for policy change at the state and national level, including marriage equality, nondiscrimination protections, and countering anti-LGBTQ policies. Prior to joining Gill Foundation, Bobby co-founded ProgressNow, a national network of state-based organizations focused on multi-issue progressive media and digital communications. Bobby also served as one of the earliest staff members of Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign and helped develop the campaign’s online engagement strategies. After 26 years as a Coloradan, Bobby recently reallocated to Dallas with his husband, Shaun Cartwright.

With a background in fundraising and operations at the state and national level, Leigh Anne brings dual perspectives to clients. She specializes in working with political and non-profit clients designing structures for multi-entity organizations running programs with complex compliance reporting requirements. Through her work with MoveOn.org, United We Dream, Service Employees International Union, the AFL-CIO, Laborers’ International Union, Battleground Texas, GeorgiaNext and many other state based organizations, she has seen and reported it all. Prior to joining PoliOps, she spent almost 10 years in campaign politics, including Kaine for Governor, Obama for America and McAuliffe for Governor and ran the operations and finance for the Democratic Party of Virginia. She is currently the Treasurer of Emerge Virginia, an organization devoted to training diverse women candidates for local and state office. A mom to two young kids, Leigh Anne was looking for a better work life balance following the 2018 election and now splits her time between her continued work with PoliOps clients and being in-house with a non-profit progressive policy organization in Richmond, VA.

Aida Cuadrado Bozzo, based in Lansing, MI, is a cultural, transformational organizer, facilitator and trainer. For over 15 years she has worked for social justice across a spectrum of cultures, communities, movements and sectors. She specializes in designing and implementing leadership development and capacity building initiatives, in organizing, strategy, leadership development, and generative conflict communications, racial equity and innovative program and curriculum designs to the service of local, regional, and national organizations, networks, and campaigns.

Aliza Dichter has worked with social justice, nonprofit, and community groups for more than twenty years. She brings the stories, examples, ideas, and tools she’s learned into collaborations with leaders and groups to help them produce strategic plans, partnerships, and materials. Liza has developed particular experience working with social justice startup groups, coalitions, and projects, particularly over six years as Co-Founder and Co-Director of CIMA: Center for International Media Action, which cultivated coalitions, networks and alliances; five years as a Senior Strategist with the incubation and acceleration program at Citizen Engagement Lab; and as an independent consultant providing coaching, research, technical assistance, and hands-on collaboration to leaders and small teams navigating the nonprofit system.

Nijmie is a movement strategist and institution builder with 20 years of experience founding and running social justice organizations. She is a co-founder of the Media Mobilizing Project and Put People First! PA and and former Executive Director of the Philadelphia Student Union. Nijmie has been consulting on strategy, leadership development, communications, and racial equity with local, regional, and national organizations and alliances for six years. Some of her clients include the Center for Community Change and the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing. She is a member of RoadMap consulting.

Rose Espinola (they/them) is a xicana from the Florida swamplands. Rose is an expert at winning campaigns. They designed Planned Parenthood’s data-driven organizing model, developed Public Citizen’s 700-person volunteer program for trade justice, and directed field and tech for the strongest Bernie 2016 Super Tuesday state. Rose is also founder of the Movement Tech Help Desk and La Luchita Project.

Donnie Fowler has over twenty years experience in Silicon Valley, the public sector and national politics. He has a perfect 3-0 record leading battleground states for Bill Clinton, John Kerry, and Barack Obama. Donnie has worked on-the-ground in seventeen states and for eight presidential campaigns. He has served in the Clinton White House as a congressional liaison, at Silicon Valley’s TechNet, and as a presidential appointee and lawyer at the Federal Communications Commission. Since 2016, he has led Tech4America, a bridge between Silicon Valley and public leaders that includes a partnership with the National League of Cities. He is co-founder of Democracy Labs, a workshop for techies, creatives, and politicos to put better tools in the hands of groups and candidates. DemLabs has sparked groundbreaking work on voting machine hacking and social media monitoring, among other things. Donnie also teaches at the University of San Francisco and is a founding member of the Silicon Valley Blockchain Society.

Eve is the principal of Fox Strategies, a one-woman campaigns consultancy that helps progressive nonprofit organizations harness the power of the internet to advance their missions, recruit supporters and raise money. After working in women’s reproductive health and environmental advocacy, Eve joined M+R Strategic Services in 2002. In her 12 years on staff, she helped to grow the firm’s digital division from a fledgling offering with three staff to a leader in the field of online fundraising and advocacy with a staff of 60 talented individuals across the country. While at M+R, Eve helped leading national nonprofits including the Clinton Foundation, Oxfam America, the American Diabetes Association, Defenders of Wildlife, Consumers Union, the U.N. Foundation, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the Save Darfur Coalition, and many more raise tens of millions of dollars online and recruit millions of supporters to their causes.

Judith Freeman is a consultant for organizations, companies, campaigns, and start-ups. Previously, she worked with the Movement & Capacity Building team at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. Judith was the co-founder and CEO of the New Organizing Institute, a multi-entity training, research, and development organization for technology-enabled organizers, activists, staff, and leaders. Judith worked on the 2008 Obama digital team, managing integrations of field, digital, and technology. Prior to that, she was the senior political strategist at the AFL-CIO, where she co-founded the Analyst Institute.

Prior to joining PoliOps, Norm worked to build internal systems for some of the largest progressive political organizations in the country. These systems provided the necessary infrastructure needed to support winning campaigns as well as planned/strategic and at times unforeseen growth.

Norm's passion centers on building back office tools that support an organization's mission through targeted investments that focus resources, financial and otherwise, on scalable solutions to solve compliance and other financial and operational challenges. His experience spans 4 presidential campaigns, national multi-site nonprofits, and public service.

Having worked in the White House during President Obama's first term, Norm had the opportunity to collaborate with other White House officials to bring new technologies and a best in class CRM system so that the President could more effectively communicate with the American people. He brings this experience and strategic visioning to large and small organizations alike.

A New Jersey native, Norm lives in Washington, DC with his wife and three daughters.

Whitney Herrington has over 10 years of human capital experience across the full spectrum of human resource functions. She currently leads nonprofit human capital consulting as Vice President at NPAG, a talent strategy and executive search consulting firm. Most recently, she served as the Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (a coalition of over 200 civil and human rights organization) where she led several organizational development efforts to help staff work more effectively. Prior, Whitney led people and technology at the Southern Poverty Law Center (a civil rights advocacy organization) where she directed the transformation of human resources from a transactional, personnel function to an integrated business partner supporting rapid growth and broadened national impact. Whitney has several years’ experience consulting to numerous for- and non-profit organizations on various human capital initiatives. She earned a BBA in Finance from Western Michigan University and an MBA in Human Resources from Georgia State University. Originally from Detroit, MI, Whitney currently resides in the Washington D.C. metro area and enjoys traveling.

Meredith Horton is the Founder and Principal of MPH Concepts. She is a social justice leader, consultant, and coach with over 15 years of experience supporting advocacy organizations in their efforts to be highly effective and values-aligned. As a consultant and coach to senior social justice leaders, Meredith advises on a range of issues, including management, program development, and implementation of new projects. In addition, Meredith draws on her background in recruitment and talent strategy to help organizations thoughtfully structure key staff roles and hiring processes. Meredith has served in senior leadership roles at organizations ranging from 13 to over 300 in size, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, Southern Coalition for Social Justice, and the Texas Civil Rights Project. This leadership experience is complemented by her work as Counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Senior Advisor for Voter Protection at the Democratic Party of Georgia, and grant maker and program counsel at the Legal Services Corporation. Meredith began her legal career as an employee benefits and executive compensation attorney at Venable LLP. She has a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, and a BA in Urban Studies and Political Science from Barnard College in New York City. Meredith is the Vice Chair of the board of Kindred Communities, a DC-based non-profit that brings communities together to create anti-racist and liberated schools.

Chandra Larsen uses the power of art and creativity to ignite transformative experiences for people and organizations. For over 20 years, she has worked with people committed to tackling pervasive social issues resulting from systems of oppression and violence. She specializes in facilitating people and groups with visualizing bold strategies for a just society, personal and collective liberation, and nourishing thriving ecosystems. She founded Visualizing Change in 2017 to help individuals and organizations explore personal and collective strategies for transforming toxic beliefs, behaviors, and structures rooted in white supremacy and patriarchy as it plays out and is reinforced within dominant culture. Chandra first partnered with NLA in 2019 in their pursuit to mindfully grow the organization in centering deep equity. Together, we’ve worked to identify, disrupt and address habits of dominant culture within the organization, paving new personal, cultural, and structural practices and policies to support intentional change and growth.

Abby Levine is the chief strategist at Levine Nonprofit Solutions, LLC. For more than 20 years, she has worked hand in hand with thousands of nonprofits and foundations across the country, providing customized training, coaching, written resources, and technical assistance—all with the goal of supporting organizations to be strategic, bold, courageous, and legally compliant advocates. Abby’s expertise focuses on lobbying, election-related activities, ballot measures, grantmaking, and other advocacy strategies for 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) organizations. Most recently, Abby served as Senior Director of the Bolder Advocacy Program at Alliance for Justice (AFJ) for more than 18 years. Before that, she was the Public Policy Analyst at the National Council of Nonprofit Associations and an associate in the tax department at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Cleveland, Ohio. She has a law degree from Case Western Reserve University School of Law and a B.A. from American University. Abby proudly serves on the board of directors of Opportunity Action, The Keegan Theatre, and Nonprofit VOTE.

Mo Manklang is the Policy Director for the USFWC, the national grassroots membership and advocacy organization for worker cooperatives. Mo leads federal policy efforts and advises on state and local initiatives. Mo has been a local and national organizer around cooperatives and social justice issues in a variety of roles, including Philadelphia's social impact news and events group Generocity.org, the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance, the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia, and the Alliance for a Just Philadelphia.

Susan Misra is the co-founder of Aurora Commons, which nurtures a society that embodies a Whole Planet - Whole People - Whole Power approach. Aurora Commons believes that liberation, justice, and equity will come when our social norms, policies, world views, structural incentives, and relationships enable all of us to be both different and whole together. Aurora Commons partners with movement-building organizations and networks to become more equitable, sustainable, and strategic. In particular, we design and manage capacity building and grantmaking initiatives on a range of topics such as sharing leadership and strengthening sustainability for grassroots power-building organizations and transforming civic engagement groups to become equitable democratic organizations. Aurora Commons strategically shifts the field towards liberation through communities of practices and writings on advancing equitable systems change, expanding shared leadership, and building the capacities for building power.

Nicole Neditch has dedicated her 20-year career to building infrastructure and programs that strengthen our civic institutions, drive community impact, and support engagement and participation at the local level. Nicole has led the City of Oakland’s digital transformation, crisis response, and community engagement efforts. As an early member of the leadership team at Code for America, she helped build the civic technology field both in the US and abroad. She partners with local governments, community based organizations, coalitions and networks who are working to realign power and reimagine our systems of collective care.

Marissa Q. Paine is hopelessly addicted to helping accomplished leaders make the transformational shifts they need to create the life and business results their hearts truly desire but their heads struggle to make happen. A proud social worker by trade and expert in intra- and interpersonal relationships, Marissa’s clients include service-based business owners, nonprofit CEOs and other executive leaders; plus couples, business partners, management teams, boards of directors and beyond. She has served as chief executive in both large and small nonprofits, advised numerous boards of directors as the interim CEO responsible for managing organizational turnaround and transition, and is a certified BoardSource consultant. Marissa has also designed leadership development programs for philanthropic support organizations to execute strategic change plans in governance and racial equity, and has provided organizational transition consulting to organizations centered on racial justice including Forward Through Ferguson, We Power, We Stories, City Garden Montessori, Racial Equity in Philanthropy Fund members, For the Sake of All and National Conference for Community & Justice.

Barbara has a successful track record with more than 25 years experience as a coach and consultant, working with the leadership of emerging and established for profit and nonprofit organizations to achieve growth, scale, and impact. In addition to having her own consulting firm, Barbara was a co-founder of UpStart, a nonprofit accelerator providing ongoing business strategy development and fostering innovation for social entrepreneurs. During her tenure at UpStart, she worked with over 50 social entrepreneurs giving them the tools to develop and execute on their organizational strategies and goals. Barbara holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from UC Berkeley. She serves on a number of boards, including the Board of the Northern California Association of Strategic Planning and Facing History and Ourselves (SF region). Barbara enjoys hiking, bicycling, and skiing, and treasures her time with her husband and sons.

Paul Rivera is a Democratic activist and strategist from New York, with more than 20 years of experience in government, elections, and public advocacy. Paul got his start in politics at the 1992 Democratic Convention held in New York City, and served in the Clinton White House from 1994 through 2000, before moving back to New York. Paul is a veteran of four presidential elections (1992-2004), six national party conventions, two gubernatorial elections in New York (2002 and 2006), and five election cycles for the New York State Senate Democratic Conference (2008-2016). As an independent consultant since 2013, Paul has worked on impactful campaigns and independent expenditure efforts across the United States. Paul also served as Communications Director and Senior Advisor to the New York Senate Democratic Conference from 2009-2012, helping close record budget deficits and working to pass critical progressive and reform legislation.

Julien Ross co-founded and helped lead two immigrant justice organizations, Workers Defense Project in Austin, Texas (2002-2006) and Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (2006-2017). At Workers Defense, Julien helped start Austin’s first worker rights center, which has grown into a statewide power achieving fair employment through education, organizing, and direct services. Julien raised critical seed money in the early stages to grow the organization and managed 4 full-time staff.

In Colorado, Julien helped grow the coalition from a budget of $120,000 to $1.1 Million and from a staff of 1 to a team of 14 with 5 offices statewide. Julien supported an immigrant-led Board of 15 Directors and launched a new 501(c)(4) CIRC Action Fund in 2012 which achieved key victories on driver's licenses, in-state tuition and repealing the show-me-your-papers law.

During Julien’s tenure, CIRC participated in multi-year anti-oppression and Diversity-Equity-Inclusion engagement to strive toward a culture that reflected the values we were fighting for in the world.

After transitioning from the Colorado coalition in 2017, Julien was tapped by the Four Freedoms Fund and State Infrastructure Fund to provide executive and organizational management coaching, training, and facilitation to grantees. Julien received coaching training at Rockwood Leadership Institute's Yearlong Fellowship and recently graduated from Rockwood's inaugural 2022 Growing White Leadership For Racial Equity cohort.

Julien was born and raised in the traditional lands of the Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo people, known today as New Mexico. Julien is fluent in Spanish and able to coach and/or train in Spanish. He was a proud restaurant worker for 10 years growing up and is an avid skier, swimmer, and meteorologist/storm forecaster.

Toby is a nonprofit consultant with a focus on executive leadership coaching for startup non-profit executives and leaders of innovative program initiatives.  She is also the Founder of UpStart, an accelerator for early stage nonprofits. During her 10 year tenure as CEO, she built a team of leaders that brought UpStart from an idea to start-up to a high-impact, paradigm-shifting national organization. Prior to founding UpStart, Toby spent 7 years at the BJE-San Francisco filling a variety of roles, including an executive leadership role. Toby holds an undergraduate degree in Political Sociology from UC-Santa Barbara and a J.D. from the University of San Diego.  She currently lives in Marin County to feed her hiking habit, and enjoys nature with husband, Robert Rubin, and visits from their three amazing young adult daughters.

Justine Sarver has over 25 years of experience in social justice advocacy and campaigns. After working in the labor, reproductive health, and civil rights movement sectors, Sarver worked in the Obama Administration in 2009-2010, and then went on to run the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center for eight years. Sarver founded her consulting practice, Supernova Strategies, in 2018. She works with clients ranging from national, state, and local political organizations to philanthropic institutions, as well as supporting local non-profit advocacy and launching national narrative shift campaigns. Justine advises philanthropic institutions on state landscapes and where to consider investments, co-creates electoral and advocacy strategies, manages messaging research and communications projects, supports ballot measure planning processes and post-campaign analysis, conducts state legislative campaigns, management and leadership coaching, and builds new programs and political capacity for organizations or teams.

Julie Scarsella is the Managing Director of Community Building Strategies. In this role, she oversees a range of services in the areas of legal compliance, union/management negotiations, organizational finances, human resources, payroll and benefits, and technical/logistical support for multiple for-profit and nonprofit organizations.  

Prior to CBS, Julie gained over 20 years of director-level experience with nationally-known nonprofits. More recently, she held the position of vice president for a community foundation where the team grew assets from $5 million to $55 million within four years. She has also taught undergraduate courses in nonprofit finance, fundraising, and grant development, and held positions on several nonprofit boards. Julie earned her B.A. from Youngstown State University, holds a Master’s of Public Administration from Cleveland State University, and is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SHRM-SCP). She resides in Youngstown, Ohio with her three rowdy boys who always help keep life interesting.

Aparna Shah has worked to co-create and catalyze transformative social change for over 25 years. Her consulting practice leads with strategic visioning and embodied practice to cultivate imagination and build power toward collective governance. Under her decade-long tenure as Executive Director, Mobilize the Immigrant Vote/Power California organized 500,000+ young, immigrant, refugee, Indigenous, and voters of color, built the long-term infrastructure and capacity of grassroots multiracial organizations across the state to run electoral and issue campaigns, and established a sister organization, MIV Action Fund/ PowerCA Action. She also co-founded the reset project, which advances governance that centers people and the natural world by holding interdependence, self-determination, and sustainability as sacred. She has worked to advance the reproductive justice of women, people of color, and queer communities and spent several years working to transform a public middle school into a vibrant youth and community center in San Francisco’s Mission District. She was born in Manila, grew up in Mumbai, and lives with her family on unceded Huichin Ohlone lands, known today as Oakland, California.

Howie Stanger is the founder of Pocketbook Strategies, a finance and operations consulting firm that supports diverse progressive organizations to develop their own independent infrastructure to build political power. Howie advises and executes strategy for organizations on corporate and financial structure, multi-entity operations, and financial planning. Previously, he was a Director at Next Level Partners and the COO of Sunrise Movement. He serves on the board of directors of IfNotNow, Momentum, and his Jewish summer camp. He lives in Los Angeles.

Passionate about creating a more equitable world, Dinah supports nonprofit organizations in their efforts to be effective advocates. This includes helping develop organizational infrastructure that supports the building of grassroots political power. She served more than ten years with Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, most recently as Senior Director of Public Affairs, and now brings her experience in advocacy, electoral work, communications, and multi-entity administration to other groups seeking to advance justice. Throughout her career, Dinah has provided leadership on initiatives locally and around the country, working to protect and expand women’s health and rights through legislative and electoral campaigns in several states. She holds a BA from Santa Clara University and a MSc in Global Health Policy from the London School of Economics. Dinah currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Ananda Valenzuela (any pronouns) provides interim executive director leadership, facilitates organizational transformation, and coaches values-aligned leaders. He is passionate about nourishing joyful organizational cultures, supporting equitable self-management, and building liberatory practices. They have served as interim executive director at multiple organizations, provided capacity-building support to nonprofits for over ten years, and currently sit on the boards of Change Elemental and Hampshire College. Ananda grew up in Puerto Rico and slowly made her way across the United States, holding a variety of consulting, governance, and activist roles along the way.

Josh is currently under contract by Cooperative Impact Lab to provide progressive nonprofits in the launch and growth stages of development with the services they need to strengthen their organizational resilience by providing reliable and consistent finance and operation services, all the while reducing the time, money, and resources they spend on finance and operations. In doing so, Josh aims to alleviate these burdens so that nonprofit leaders and staff can focus their energies on the big and oftentimes complex issues that require significant flexibility and progress.

Josh served as the COO for Cory Booker’s presidential campaign, the Director of Operations for the Mozilla Foundation, and Director of Operations for MoveOn.org. Prior to his near decade of service in finance and operations, Josh was an Organizer for coordinated and candidate campaigns, State Director for SEIU Nevada in 2008, and National Data Services Director for the Democratic National Committee.

With over 30 years’ experience helping leaders address pressing business and organizational challenges, Joel is known for his ability to help leaders dramatically improve performance by leveraging the human side of the enterprise. With start-ups, where founders and leaders need to take smart action under highly complex and uncertain conditions, his work focuses on building the capacity for rapid learning and improvement – particularly when dealing with high conflict/high-stakes situations. Joel has served on a number of corporate and non-profit Boards. Recent director roles have included The African Food and Peace Foundation, CorStone, and Upstart.

Nijmie is a movement strategist and institution builder with 20 years of experience founding and running social justice organizations. She is a co-founder of the Media Mobilizing Project and Put People First! PA and and former Executive Director of the Philadelphia Student Union. Nijmie has been consulting on strategy, leadership development, communications, and racial equity with local, regional, and national organizations and alliances for six years. Some of her clients include the Center for Community Change and the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing. She is a member of RoadMap consulting.