Resume

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF ORGANIZING and CALIFORNIA LEAD ORGANIZER
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism (RAC)
October 2023-December 2024                            Los Angeles CA

• Led successful RAC-CA campaigns in coalition with other groups to limit oil wells in residential neighborhoods that cause health problems for nearby residents and contribute to global warming. Organizing by RAC-CA and its allies caused the oil industry in 2024 to withdraw a ballot measure that would have allowed new oil wells within 3200 feet of houses, schools, and the like. We also helped pass two bills in 2024 that require companies to shut down some idle and low-producing oil wells.
• Led nonpartisan voter engagement effort for RAC-CA members to support reproductive freedom ballot measures in Nevada and Arizona through postcards, phone banks, and canvassing trips.
• Provided coaching and training to Reform Jewish congregations and individual leaders to strengthen their ability to move their congregations’ members into action for social justice
• Supervised organizers in Illinois and Florida.

• Supervised organizers in RAC State Projects California, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Florida.
• Helped develop strategy and supported an organizer in RAC national campaigns around voter engagement, voting rights legislation, and climate change.
• Filled in for RAC-PA organizer when she was out on medical leave

• Led RAC-NY in coalition with other groups to pass parole reform in 2022. RAC-CA’s efforts were responsible for winning the support of moderate legislators in Long Island, Westchester County, and upstate that had never supported this kind of criminal justice reform legislation before.
• Provided coaching and training to Reform Jewish congregations and individual leaders to strengthen their ability to move their congregations’ members into action for social justice

• Provided coaching and training to Reform Jewish congregations and individual leaders to strengthen their ability to move their congregations’ members into action for social justice
• Coordinated successful CA statewide campaigns with coalition partners to pass state legislation to prevent the state prison and law enforcement from cooperating with Federal deportation of immigrants; win money for affordable housing; set benchmarks to make all energy in California renewable and carbon-free by 2040; collect information from law enforcement to track racial profiling; and tripled state funding for proven local gun violence prevention programs.  Coordinated a successful NY statewide campaign to pass state legislation to prevent the state from incarcerating parolees for technical parole violations.
• Hired and supervised a community organizer in Northern California and an organizer in Texas.
• Taught a college class on community organizing in 2017 and 2020 to Rabbinic Students at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. 

• Developed relationships with religious leaders around the state and involved them in the Religious Committee for Commercial Property Tax Reform.
• Reached out to business leaders to get their views on commercial property tax reform and to identify business supporters of our campaign.
• Developed materials and gave presentations to explain commercial property tax reform to religious leaders around the state. 

• Provided coaching to Pilipino Workers Center to develop and implement a new leadership development plan (through Liberty Hill’s Wally Marx Institute, March 2012-present). 
• Convened grantees working on transit-oriented development for the California Community Foundation (January 2013-January 2014)
• Developed talking points, story, and fundraising strategy for new national organizing network The Alliance for a Just Society. 
• Designed curriculum for, provided training to, and ran the Jeremiah Fellowship, a social justice leadership program for Jews in their twenties and early thirties for Progressive Jewish Alliance (March 2011-June 2011, April 2012-June 2012, September 2012-June 2013)
• Wrote an analysis of the Los Angeles Jewish social justice world for the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network for Justice and made recommendations to JOIN for Justice’s future LA work.  (2011)
• Provided coaching and training to Jewish World Watch. 
• Coordinated the Working Group on Labor and Community, a funders’ affinity group that is a project of the Neighborhood Funders Group. Under my leadership, the Working Group increased its programming, expanded its membership, and raised the profile of labor-community partnerships in philanthropy.
• Wrote case studies of four community organizations practicing Integrated Voter Engagement for the Funders Committee on Civic Participation.
• Conducting a scan of the community organizing movement in the United States for the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. 
• Completed consulting projects for the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Liberty Hill Foundation, Jewish World Watch, and the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program. 

• Co-designed and co-ran this new program for people of faith who want to be community organizers.
• Recruited 16 Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Spiritualist organizing residents.
• Recruited 16 host groups in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and the Bay Area who provided organizing placements, mentoring, and training to the residents.
• Led the process of designing the curriculum for the program, centering primarily on personal leadership skills and the connection between organizing and faith. 
• Provided coaching and one-to-one direct support to half of the organizing residents. 
• Mentored JFSJ staff so they could run the program in-house from the second year of the program onward. 

• Managed grantmaking programs in community organizing, democratic participation, and immigrant rights program areas. Awarded $2 million of annual grants that led to an increased minimum wage in 6 states, millions of new and infrequent voters casting their votes, and strengthening of the movement for economic justice and civic participation. 
• Helped to increase congregation members’ understanding of and support for the grantmaking strategies of the Veatch Program, their congregational funding program. 
• Led effort to create a grantmaking strategy focused on winning change at the state level.
• Worked with funder colleagues to increase funder support for community organizing with the Funders Committee on Civic Participation, Interfaith Funders, the Neighborhood Funders Group, and other funder affinity groups.

• Managed community organizing grantmaking program for this national public charity. 
• Conducted an evaluation of JFJ’s grantmaking
• Supported an initiative to involve more synagogues in faith-based community organizing efforts. 
• Participated in the senior management team.   
• Raised funds from new and established donors. 
• Supervised and hired program officer and grantmaking associate. 

• Provided technical assistance and coaching to community groups to improve their organizing work.
• Worked with staff and leaders of the Fifth Avenue Committee to develop a plan to increase resident engagement and accountability.
• Led the board of the New Prospect Fund in the process of developing a new grantmaking strategy.
• Provided coaching and support to a community organizer at the Pratt Area Community Council.

• Designed and ran a new initiative providing training, coaching, and funding to improve community organizing practices of CDCs and raise organizing standards for the CDC field.
• Raised $1.5 million from national and local foundations for the organizing initiative.
• Designed and ran training workshops and provided direct technical assistance and coaching to CDC executive directors, organizers, and board members to help them develop community leaders, increase resident participation in their CDC, incorporate effective voter engagement into their work, and build power for low- and moderate-income residents and people of color.
• Hired and supervised the associate director of organizing. 
• Oversaw a team of coaching consultants.

• Coordinated all organizing and community participation activities of grassroots-oriented CDC, including successful campaigns to win funding and city permits for 20 units of affordable rental housing, obtain land for a community garden, and win a community benefit agreement for a new hockey arena.
• Managed a staff of four organizers, several interns, and youth peer leaders.
• As part of the Senior Management Team, helped set development, management, and fiscal policies.

• Developed strategy and trainings for the voter engagement field campaign for the 1994 presidential election.
• Analyzed official data and created materials to track voter registration.
• Organized an alternative vote count that used more than 100 Novell-networked computers in 8 different locations across El Salvador to prevent voter fraud.

• Created and staffed two neighborhood coalitions working toward community control of development, which blocked construction of a biotech research skyscraper and convinced university to control disruptive student behavior.
• Organized campaigns to register voters and support statewide anti-poverty efforts

• Organized over 2500 tenants into twelve tenants unions in buildings ranging from 6 to 900 units to improve conditions, change management companies, prevent displacement, and limit rent increases.
• Trained tenants in tenants rights, campaign planning, outreach, lobbying, and direct action.

• Fellow, P3 Organizer Seminar, 2023-24, run by Hahrie Han’s P3 lab.
• Member, PICO National Network Guiding Council, April 2014 through April 2015.
• Board member of LA Voice, December 2009 through May 2015.
• Board member of the JOIN for Justice, March 2011 through May 2015.
• Member of the PICO Network National Steering Committee, January 2012 through January 2013. 
• Member of the Southern California Regional Council of Progressive Jewish Alliance, 2009 – 2010.
• Co-chair of the Minyan Tzedek community organizing path at IKAR, an unaffiliated progressive synagogue in Los Angeles, CA, from Spring 2008 through the present.
• Vice President for Community Service, Hollywood Schoolhouse Parent Association Board June 2009 through May 2011.
• Steering committee member and chair of the program committee, Funders Committee on Civic Participation.  September 2004 to June 2007.
• Board member of Interfaith Funders. January 2000-June 2007
  Co-chair of community organizing effort at Kol Chayeinu (an unaffiliated progressive synagogue), Brooklyn, NY, Summer 2004 through Spring 2007. 
• Chair of New York City Funders Group in Support of Community Organizing, 2002-2003
• Founding member of the Strategy Team of Greater Boston Interfaith Organization (IAF), 1999
• National Board Member of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES) 1995-1996
• Keynote panel presentation at Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation’s Community Organizers Symposium, May 1999 in Sacramento, California.