MSC Associates are organizers, activists and consultants who are core collaborators in MSC’s movement building work. Associates are trained in MSC’s methodology and specialize in areas such as alliance building, capacity building, research and field development.
Billy Wimsatt
Email: ibrahim@movementstrategy.org
Ibrahim is a writer, event organizer, avid blogger and networking natural who has built connections between youth development, organizing and cultural groups throughout the country. Prior to joining MSC, Ibrahim worked as a freelance trainer for the League of Independent Voters and as a consultant for the Amistad Academy in New Haven, Connecticut. He also served on the planning team of the Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment, a new small high school now in its second year. From 2002-2004 ibrahim served as the Director of Youth Programs at Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, where he involved young people in every aspect of program decision-making. From 2001 – 2002 he worked at Active Element Foundation as the research coordinator of the Future 5000 book on youth organizing and activism in the U.S.; his job was to “find people”. In 1999 he was a National Organizer with Corporate Accountability International (then INFACT) and attended the LISTEN and BLOC gatherings of 1999. He has been an instructor for Outward Bound and a freelance outdoor educator for Love and Liberation, a consulting firm based in Western Massachusetts.
Email: viveka@igc.org
Viveka Chen provides culturally-based capacity building and facilitation services. She is dedicated to working with small and medium community-based nonprofits committed to social justice. Viveka specializes in alliance building, executive transitions, strategic planning, strategic decision-making facilitation, board and staff development, and organizational/operational retooling.
Since 1990, Viveka has worked with the Bay Area’s low-income communities of color. She started at ASIAN, Inc., was Executive Director of the East Bay Conversion & Reinvestment Commission (planning Alameda County military base closures), Associate Director of Urban Habitat and worked at Policy Link.
In July 2001, Viveka started a consulting practice and also became a CompassPoint Nonprofit Services affiliate consultant. From 2001 to 2004 she was the Project Coordinator consultant for the Diversity Network Project, a joint foundation initiative funding and building capacity with diverse, multi-issue, multi-constituency collaborations working for sustainable communities. Viveka is also a board member of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), the board chair and a teacher for the San Francisco Buddhist Center, and teaches meditation and workshops to sustain activists.
Email: greghodge@earthlink.net
Gregory Hodge is an organizational development and community building consultant. He works with a range of groups from small nonprofits and foundations to public agencies, particularly school districts. He formerly served as the Chief Executive Officer for California Tomorrow, an Oakland-based organization that is dedicated to building a strong multiracial and multicultural society that embraces diversity as our greatest asset. California Tomorrow works on a variety of community building issues – social, educational and economic – by conducting action research, policy advocacy and capacity building trainings. In addition, Gregory was elected to his second term as a member of the Oakland Unified School District Board of Education in March 2004.
He previously served as the Executive Director of Safe Passages: the Oakland Child Health and Safety Initiative, an effort designed to improve and promote the health and safety of youth in the City of Oakland through community involvement and systems reform. Safe Passages is a collaborative effort of the City of Oakland, Oakland Unified School District, Alameda County and community residents.
Prior to working for Safe Passages, Greg was the executive director of the Urban Strategies Council, where he also served as the director of a city-wide Youth Development Initiative, managed the Freedom Schools program and worked as the regional representative of the Black Community Crusade for Children, an effort coordinated nationally by the Children’s Defense Fund. In 1996, he helped recruit, train and facilitate a 42-member community building team as part of Oakland’s Empowerment Zone/Enhanced Enterprise Community program.
Greg has also worked as an attorney in private practice handling a variety of civil litigation matters. His involvements include work with African American youth as a teacher and mentor; board member and minister at Wo’se Community Church; drummer with Bantaba Dance Ensemble; and member of the national Annenberg School District Reform Task Force. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern University and a law degree from Golden Gate University in San Francisco. He is married and the father of four children.
Email: veramiao@gmail.com
Vera Miao was the Executive Director of the Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing, a collective of national, regional, and local grantmakers and youth organizing practitioners dedicated to advancing youth organizing as a strategy for youth development and social justice. Over her six years as the Executive Director, the FCYO grew to include 33 foundations and practitioner organizations, raised almost $7 million dollars, and distributed approximately $4 million to youth organizing groups and intermediaries. In addition to grantmaking and capacity building programs, Vera’s work focused on strategic funder outreach and education, communication and development of field building and intellectual capital for youth organizing.
Vera has also been providing consulting services to philanthropic institutions, including the Open Society Institute, Ford Foundation, and the Surdna Foundation. Vera also worked with community-based New York City organizations at Community Resource Exchange, providing nonprofit management consulting services with a special focus on strategic and operational planning, fundraising, and board development.
Email: zak@movementstrategy.org
Most recently, Zak Sinclair was the Director of Movement Generation. Previously, he served as a Program Officer at Vanguard Public Foundation, where he was primarily responsible for the Technical Assistance and Capacity Building program. Before working at Vanguard, Zak was the Associate Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, an organization that mobilizes youth of color, low-income transgender folks, and parents around issues of police and prison reform in California. For many years, Zak has provided leadership in LGBT organizations both locally and nationally, including serving as a founding board member of the Washington, D.C.-based National Youth Advocacy Coalition, and working as the Queer Youth Leadership Coordinator of San Francisco-based Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center.
Zak received his formal organizing training at the Center for Third World Organizing, in 1996. He has led organizing campaigns to increase police accountability in the TG/TS community, increase lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights with the Lesbian Avengers, and implement anti-harassment measures for LGBT students in San Francisco schools. In 1996, he was a San Francisco field organizer with Californians for Justice on the “No on 209” campaign to save affirmative action. In 1994, Zak received a Bachelor’s degree in History with honors from Brown University and later completed a Master’s degree in Organizational Psychology with a Certificate in Conflict Resolution at JFK University.
Email: billy@movementstrategy.org
As a Movement Strategy Center Fellow, Billy Wimsatt is Director of Field 3.0, a community dialogue and documentation project on the future of field organizing. Separately, he runs “Swing the Senate,” a voter engagement program targeting likely drop-off voters in six states in 2010 --as a special 501(c)4 project of the League of Young Voters. He is also publishing and touring a book Please Don’t Bomb The Suburbs: A mid-term report on my generation and the future of our movement (Akashic Books).
With background in social entrepreneurship, philanthropic consulting, journalism, hip-hop arts, and political organizing, Wimsatt founded and for five years ran the League of Young Voters which organized 3000+ youth to create 300+ voter guides and impacted 29 state and local elections or pieces of legislation. In 2005, he co-founded Generational Alliance. Over his career as a funder and fundraiser he has helped move more than eight million dollars to social change. Before coming to Movement Strategy Center, Wimsatt worked for Green For All, and consulted for Rock The Vote, MoveOn.org, Hull Family Foundation, The DC Project, The Funders’ Collaborative on Youth Organizing, and completed Rockwood’s year-long course for executive leaders.
In 2008, he created and ran the Ohio Youth Corps program for the Ohio Democratic Party / Obama For America, which trained and deployed 50 staff throughout Ohio. He has written for Vibe, Chicago Tribune and published five books with 100,000+ in print including No More Prisons, winner of the 1999 Firecracker Book Award for Political Non-Fiction. He has spoken at Harvard, Yale, MIT, and Stanford, was named by Utne Magazine as “Utne Visionary” and to The Source Magazine’s “Power 30”.
