Staff
Ingrid Benedict
Cole B. Cole
Mimi Ho
Maryam Roberts
Aba Taylor
Board
Alvin Stark
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: ingrid@movementstrategy.org
To Be Added
Title: Managing Director
Email: rachel@movementstrategy.org
Rachel comes to MSC with leadership development, alliance building and program management experience in the social justice sector. Before joining MSC, Rachel served as the Fellowship Director at Young People For (YP4), a program committed to identifying, engaging and empowering college students to develop leadership skills while creating meaningful social change in their communities.
After graduating Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, Rachel moved to Washington, DC to serve as an Eisendrath Legislative Fellow at the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism (RAC). After her one-year fellowship at the RAC concluded, she went to work as a legislative representative for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). After three years in the nation’s Capitol, Rachel wanted to find other ways to build progressive power, so she moved to New York City and eventually joined YP4 in time to support YP4’s inaugural fellowship class.
Rachel also serves on the Board of Directors of the One Percent Foundation, a nonprofit organization committed to engaging young adults in philanthropy.
Born in Missouri and raised in New York, Rachel joins the many “East Coasters” living in the Bay Area and loving it.
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: cole@movementstrategy.org
Cole holds an MSc from the London School of Economics and has worked as a community facilitator, strategist, and consultant with non-profits, socially responsible corporations, and governmental agencies for more than 10 years. Cole's background crosses multiple sectors but as a young queer consultant of color working in the fields of finance, policy advocacy, leadership development, and social enterprise, she is often uniquely positioned to bring together groups across divides. Through this work she brings an approach to strategic planning and curriculum development that centralizes operational systems, resourcing, and finance while aligning with an organization’s values and vision. A Rotary International Ambassadorial Scholar, Coro Fellow, and recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, Cole has worked across the US and internationally on issues of community economic development and social enterprise. In addition, Cole co-authored Through the Lens of Culture: Building Capacity for Social Change and Sustainable Communities. The work from this piece has been used to forward understanding of culturally competent training across the country.
Title: Finance Director
Email: sihle@movementstrategy.org
Sihle Dinani joins the MSC staff with over with over 10 years of accounting and administrative experience in nonprofit organizations. Sihle has previously worked with the YMCA of San Diego County, Sweatshop Watch, and the Garment Worker Center, developing skills in accounting as well as fundraising and public education. Outside of the administrative realm, her work included facilitating workshops for students, labor organizers and fellow activists on the LA garment industry and globalization.
After graduating Claremont McKenna College, Sihle served as an AmeriCorps*VISTA volunteer supporting career development initiatives for low-income high school students. In addition, she has volunteered with community based grassroots organizations like Black Women for Wellness, Humanitarian Notes, Infuse Africa, and the Southern California Agricultural Land Foundation.
A mother, consummate volunteer and novice gardener, Sihle is dedicated to developing and supporting efficiency and accountability within social justice organizations.
Title: Development Manager
Email: jose@movementstrategy.org
Jose joins MSC after working in fund development at People’s Community Organization for Reform and Empowerment in Los Angeles. Prior to fund development, he organized low-income communities of color to address issues of environmental justice, community health, and educational equity. In 2005, Jose participated as a delegate in an international conference and fact-finding mission on human rights held in Mindanao in the Southern Philippines. He visited conflict areas, photographed and documented the stories of the Moro people, the native Muslim inhabitants of Mindanao.
Jose has also worked as a reporter for Pacifica Radio for KPFK in Los Angeles and KPFA in Berkeley, producing news segments and features on U.S. militarism, immigration reform, climate change, workers and globalization.
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: mimi@movementstrategy.org
To Be Added
Title: Executive Director and Board President
Email: taj@movementstrategy.org
Before founding MSC in 2001, Taj James was the Director of Youth Policy and Development at Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth, where he organized youth and parents around a range of community issues. Previously, he worked as the Western Regional Field Organizer for the Black Student Leadership Network, a project of the Children’s Defense Fund.
Taj has served on the boards of many nonprofit and philanthropic institutions such as The Praxis Project, Youth United For Community Action, the Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing, the California Fund for Youth Organizing and the Gay Straight Alliance Network. He has written extensively on the topics of movement building, organizational change, and the role of young people in social change. A graduate of Stanford University, Taj was a recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Fellowship and was named a “Local Hero” by the San Francisco Bay Guardian.
Title: Technology Manager
Email: elaine@movementstrategy.org
Elaine comes to MSC with a strong background in student and youth organizing. While a student at UC Santa Barbara she cultivated and nurtured a passion for social justice through her work The Resource Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity, and student led groups like the Queer Student Union and Queer Collective. Elaine pushed awareness of LGBTQ issues on campus through facilitating trainings and workshops on sexual violence, transgender and genderqueer experience, and queer identity. She is a recipient of the Stonewall Award for her activism and contribution to raising awareness of LGBTQ issues on campus and in the surrounding community.
After graduating 2006, Elaine returned home to the Bay Area and became active with various community groups. Alongside her work at MSC, Elaine is also a trainer and organizer for Filipino based organizations, Filipinos for Affirmative Action and Anakbayan-East Bay, supporting campaigns on violence prevention, voter engagement and financial literacy from Union City to Richmond. Elaine is a dedicated organizer and advocate for Filipinos in the US and abroad.
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: jidan@movementstrategy.com
Jidan Koon is a consultant-practitioner seeking to support social justice organizations to do their work intentionally, joyfully, and sustainably. She brings a broad and diverse set of on the ground experience with organizing and institutional reform to her consulting practice that focuses on leading planning processes, facilitating convenings, traning, and curriculum development. For the past four years, she has served a range of organizations including the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, Ruckus Society, San Francisco Immigrant Legal and Education Network, and Young People For. Whether mediating tough conflicts or facilitating a multi-organization retreat, Jidan excels at creating inclusive, collaborative environments.
Jidan’s field experience encompasses grassroots organizing to service provision to institutional roles. As a service provider, she founded mentoring and enrichment programs for under-represented youth through Reach!, the East Bay Asian Youth Center, and Stiles Hall. She launched and managed the first three years of a multi-service youth center based at a high school in Oakland through Youth Together. As an organizer, Jidan was a church based organizer with Safe and Sound, Baltimore Campaign for Children and Youth and continues to organize in her community in the East Bay. In addition to starting and institutionalizing programs and groups, she served as the Special Assistant to the Superintendent in Oakland Public Schools and consulted with its Meaningful Student Engagement Initiative.
She received her BA in Political Science and a minor in Education from the University of California at Berkeley and a Masters of Public Policy with a certificate in Urban and Regional Planning from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: kimi@movementstrategy.org
Kimi Lee has an extensive history of working with youth and community organizing and has been a campaign organizer against the various attacks on people of color for over ten years. After graduating from UC Davis, Kimi became the Field Organizer for the University of California Student Association (UCSA), a statewide coalition of UC undergraduate, professional and graduate student associations. She was one of the lead student organizers during the UC Regent's attack on affirmative action and worked against Proposition 209. She became the Executive Director of UCSA and helped run a statewide student voter registration and education campaign, which registered over 20,000 new student voters.
In 1997, Kimi moved to Los Angeles to work as a labor researcher with SEIU Local 1877. She then became the Field and Legislative Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Southern California. She was the Southern California Campaign Director for the No on Prop 21 campaign and created Southern Californians for Youth, a network of youth organizing groups in Los Angeles County.
Kimi was the former Executive Director of the Garment Worker Center (GWC). She was the first staff person hired to open and establish the GWC in 2001. Since then, the GWC has successfully organized a national boycott against a major retailer led by garment workers, developed garment worker leaders and helped workers get over $1.5 million in owed wages and penalties. Kimi's family immigrated from Burma and her mother was a garment worker in San Francisco, both of which led to her social justice activism.
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: julie@movementstrategy.org
Julie Quiroz-Martínez joins the MSC staff after six years as an independent consultant with Mosaic, a collaboration of consultants she co-founded to assist organizations and foundations to develop new ideas, strategies and capacity for achieving racial and social justice. In 2008, Julie served as the Senior Program Consultant for the Akonadi Foundation where she developed new racial justice grant making programs and communications plans and projects.
Julie has collaborated extensively with MSC, serving on the team that assisted the Akonadi Foundation with its strategic planning and co-authoring the MSC publication Re-Generation: Young People Shaping Environmental Justice.
Julie is dedicated to racial justice as a core aspect of social justice movement building, producing numerous reports to reflect and stimulate work in the field of racial justice and to shape funding strategies to support it. Julie was the lead writer for A Guide to Grant making with a Racial Equity Lens, published by GrantCraft and the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity (PRE). Julie also co-authored Changing the Rules of the Game: Youth Development & Structural Racism in collaboration with PRE and the Ford Foundation. Julie’s published articles include cover stories on race and immigration for The Nation and Colorlines.
Julie has extensive planning and facilitation experience including serving as a consultant to the San Francisco Foundation in the launching of the Bay Area Environmental Health Collaborative and planning and facilitating meetings such as a multi-state gathering of prison activist organizations, a statewide evaluation of the successful campaign to defeat Proposition 54, and a nationwide series of discussions on racial justice in labor organizing.
Julie currently lives in the Fruitvale district of Oakland where she spends most of her time supporting her daughter’s many athletic, artistic, and educational pursuits, but also carves out time to nurture insight through writing poetry.
Title: Operations Coordinator
Email: maryam@movementstrategy.org
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: lisa@movementstrategy.org
Lisa served as the Associate Director at Movement Strategy Center from 2002-2009, when she became a Senior Fellow at MSC. As a Senior Fellow, she works with the Strong Families Initiative as a Communications Strategist, which includes leading communications for multiple campaigns, editing the reproductive justice blog, and supporting racial justice leaders to find and use their voices as writers. Lisa also facilitates the Ford Foundation’s Initiative on Sexuality Research.
Previously, Lisa spent many years doing capacity building and strategic planning with social justice organizations. She also designed and led programs in experiential education ranging from hiking and canoeing to studying economics and human rights and the US Mexico border.
Lisa lives, works and plays in Oakland with her husband and their two kids.
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: brenda@movementstrategy.org
Brenda comes to MSC with over 8 years of experience in the nonprofit sector. Her areas of interest include movement building, youth and community organizing, environmental health and justice, womens health, and health equity issues. She served as the Program Manager at Breast Cancer Action for 5 years, where she was responsible for overseeing campaigns, directing legislative and policy work, speaking with the media, and writing for newsletter and online communications. Prior to this, Brenda was the Associate Director at Literacy for Environmental Justice, a youth organization focused on environmental justice issues in Bayview Hunters Point in San Francisco.
She is Vice-President of her neighborhood association and serves on the Advisory Board of KIDS for the BAY, which engages youth in hands-on environmental science that connects students with their local watershed and inspires them to take action to improve their environment and community. Prior to her nonprofit work Brenda studied howler monkeys, directed field research, and developed conservation education and community development programs in Central America.
Title: Fiscal Sponsor Projects Coordinator
Email: aba@movementstrategy.org
To Be Added
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: anasa@movementstrategy.org
As an artist, producer, facilitator, strategist and activist-organizer Anasa Troutman continues to developing her personal mission to use intellect and art to create personal, community and global transformation. Currently a Senior Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center, her current work is organizational cultural transformation and alignment and community building as a path to global transformation.
Anasa began her career building the soul music scene in Atlanta, GA working with singers, writers and musicians and other artists. Among her first group of clients was an unknown singer/songwriter named India Arie, whose simple combination of voice and guitar was meant for personal healing and social change. In the years since, Anasa has served as a member of the National Coordinating Committee for the National Hip Hop Political Convention, as a member organizer for the Institute for Policy Study's Cities for Progress Program, Marketing Strategist for the Dennis Kucinich campaign for the 2004 Democratic Presidential nomination, Consulting Producer for the Young Peoples Project's "Finding Our Folk" Tour, organizer with the Progressive Majority's Racial Justice Campaign and producer and leadership team member for the historic Highlander Center.
No matter what her work, Anasa belief in the power of personal transformation and dedication to the power of art and culture are her guiding forces to building justice, equity and compassion.
Title: Senior Fellow
Email: kristen@movementstrategy.org
Kristen is passionate about the role of narrative and story in movement building. As a trainer, artist, writer, and educator she has over 20 years of experience supporting communities, alliances and movements to use story in their pursuit of social justice and transformation. Currently, Kristen’s primary focus at MSC is Transformative Movement Building – focusing on how movement builders are integrating creative, body-centered and contemplative practice to be more transformative and bold in their work.
At MSC Kristen has used her role as a writer, researcher, and alliance builder to help social justice leaders frame and embody a new story. Kristen played a leadership role in designing MSC’s innovative sector alliance-building program. She has been the lead author on many of MSC’s reports. Her work and interests have cut across the sectors of Environmental and Ecological Justice, Gender Justice, Disability Justice, Media Justice, and Youth Organizing.
Before coming to MSC, Kristen founded Youth in Focus, an organization dedicated to creating a more just, sustainable and democratic society by increasing young people’s power and leadership through youth led action research. She has served as a trainer, coach and consultant to many youth-led and intentionally intergenerational projects and organizations.
Kristen has focused on projects that highlight the voices of “frontline communities.” While at KPFA/Pacifica Radio, Kristen launched Full Circle, a weekly cultural and public affairs show dedicated to communities of color and queer communities. She was the lead producer “Our Power” a series profiling Indigenous organizers challenging the oil and power industries and “Queer as Youth”, a series focused on the experiences of queer youth of color in foster care, education, and gentrifying communities.
She is also an active and proud parent organizer around special education issues in Oakland.
Title: Board Member
Sarah is currently the Project Manager of PIPRA, the Public Intellectual Property Rights Association, an organization that develops intellectual property and commercialization strategies for technologies that will directly address hunger and poverty in the developing world. She is also an entrepreneur currently developing ideamrkt, a tool that will support and spread community innovations widely and efficiently for the most social benefit. Sarah has a JD from Columbia Law School and an MPH from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia. Her substantive areas of expertise are environmental justice and population and family heath and she has worked as a staff attorney at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest and as the Deputy Director of Young People For, where she managed the social change work of close to 200 young leaders each year. Sarah has significant experience supporting social entrepreneurs to build and maintain their enterprises.
Title: Board Member
Email: msqrd@igc.org
Marianne is a grassroots organizer, campaign and media strategist, and author. Her 20-plus year career began with youth organizing for the 21st Century Leadership Project, a program she came up in as a youth leader. Since that time, she has run national campaigns and programs for groups such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace International. She is the co-founder and former Executive Director of the Center for Commercial-Free Public Education. Under Manilov’s direction, the Center was credited with establishing a bi-partisan coalition of local groups in 22 states, that brought the issue of corporate influence and advertising in schools onto the national agenda, including congressional hearings. Other career highlights include: leadership team for the Campaign to Save Headwaters and staff member of the successful Iowa team for Jesse Jackson in 1988. She serves on the Boards of Directors of the Movement Strategy Center, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and EarthRights International.
Title: Board Member
Executive Director Eveline Shen has led Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice (ACRJ) since 1999. Under Eveline’s leadership, ACRJ is recognized for its innovative leadership in the Reproductive Justice Movement in working with grassroots communities, providing thought leadership, developing effective tools and resources for evaluation, training and documentation, and organizing for long term systemic change. In 2007, Eveline developed Expanding the Movement for Empowerment and Reproductive Justice (EMERJ), ACRJ’s national movement building initiative which currently works with over 70 organizations across the country to advance social change and reproductive justice through organizing, movement building and policy change.
Eveline serves on the board of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project and Movement Strategy Center and is a member of the Center for American Progress’ National Women’s Health Leadership Network. During the past 8 years, she has also served as Principal Investigator for two National Institutes of Health grants that explore the intersection between environmental justice and reproductive justice.
Eveline was recently named by Women’s E-news as one of the 21 leaders for the 21st Century. She is a 2009 Gerbode Fellow and holds a Masters in Public Health from UC Berkeley in Community Health Education.
