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| Betty Burkes Board of Directors |
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Betty Burkes is the Rethink Curriculum Coordinator and leader of the Elders Circle that provides wisdom and guidance. She is a life-long educator and activist. Her work as an educator has included the Peace Corps in Africa, schools in California, England, and Cape Cod. She served as the President of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) for 3 years and served on the National Board from 1989-2002, conducting workshops on educating and organizing for action around oppression issues. From 2002-2006, Betty worked with the United Nations and the Hague Appeal for Peace organizing the local initiation of peace education projects in Cambodia, Albania, Peru and Niger in which weapons reduction projects were launched. She currently co-chairs the Cambridge Peace Commission, a department of the city which inspires local and global peace building.She is a life-long educator and activist. Her work as an educator has included the Peace Corps in Africa, schools in California, England, and Cape Cod. She served as the President of Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) for 3 years and served on the National Board from 1989-2002, conducting workshops on educating and organizing for action around oppression issues. From 2002-2006, Betty worked with the United Nations and the Hague Appeal for Peace organizing the local initiation of peace education projects in Cambodia, Albania, Peru and Niger in which weapons reduction projects were launched. |
| Lydia Cabasco Board of Directors |
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Lydia Cabasco is a Professional Coach and Member/trainer for the Queer Asian Pacific Islander Collective in Seattle, WA. |
| Carolyn Cushing Progressive Communicators Network, Director |
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Managing Director of the Progressive Communicators Network, Carolyn has worked for over fifteen years in social justice and educational organizations, focusing on organization and resource development as well as participatory learning, research and organizational processes. Carolyn was Spirit in Action’s first staff person in 2000, and has served as the Network’s primary organizer since its beginning. read more> |
| Dee Dee Green Director of Operations and Finance |
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Dee Dee Green is a 2007 recipient of the New Voices Gulf Coast Transformation Fellowship. Dee Dee's fellowship is a two-year commitment as Program Director with Rethink—Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools. Rethink is an organization that supports students who want their input valued and their voices heard during the rebuilding of New Orleans public schools. Before relocating to New Orleans from Arkansas, Dee Dee worked as Youth Program Director for Just Communities of Northwest Arkansas, Community Organizer for the Women's Project and Family Advocate for Women and Children First both in central Arkansas. She is a consultant for the Community Media Organizing Project (CMOP) and is currently serving on the Leadership Council of the Progressive Communicators Network. Dee Dee graduated with a B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. |
| Connie Fitzgerald Director of Operations and Finance |
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Connie Fitzgerald has worked with non-profits in finance and personnel since the early 1980's both as a staff member and as a volunteer. She worked with Peace Development Fund for 25 years, 15 years as the Director of Administration and Finance. She is the Treasurer of the Solidago Foundation. She served on Spirit in Action’s Board of Directors before joining our staff in 2007. |
| Pamela Freeman Leadership Program, Co-Coordinator |
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Pamela Freeman is a long time social activist. She is the founder of the Philadelphia Black Women's health project, a cofounder of Playback for Change (an improv theater company that has a focus on looking at race, class, rank, privilege and gender). She is also a former board member of Spirit In Action, and Training for Change. Pamela is a therapist and facilitator who reside in Philadelphia. She was just accepted into the Community Dharma program at Spirit Rock meditation which she is very excited about. |
| Phyllis Labanowski Leadership Program, Co-Facilitator |
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Phyllis is a white woman of European descent. As a result of being raised in a working class, Polish patriarchy, rife with bigotry and prejudice, she has dedicated her life to creating justice in education and in the community where she lives. She has 20 years of teaching experience in elementary and secondary classrooms, in public and private schools in rural, suburban and urban communities. She is an artist, a facilitator, and a ritual-maker. Phyllis was the project coordinator helping us to create, Facilitating Circles of Change Curriculum Guide. |
| Jennifer Ladd Board of Directors |
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Jennifer Ladd is Co-Founder of Class Action (www.classism.org), whose mission is to raise consciousness about class, classism, and money issues. She inherited wealth at age 21, and then founded The People’s Resource of Southwest Ohio with an activist board. She has been involved with social change philanthropic/activist organizations such as the Funding Exchange, A Territory Resource, Threshold Foundation, the Right Livelihood Foundation, the National Network of Grantmakers, the Peace Development Fund, the Women's Donor Network, the Women's Fund of Western Massachusetts, Peppercorn Foundation and Responsible Wealth- a project of United for a Fair Economy. In addition to her work with wealth and class she is an educator who has worked with grade levels from preschool to graduate school, at institutions including Lesley College, the School for International Training, University of Massachusetts, and Springfield College. She earned her Doctorate in Education from the Center for International Education at the University of Massachusetts where she directed a global education program, taught in the Elementary Teacher Education Program, and did research on anti\racism education in predominately white, rural schools. |
| Tom Louie Board of Directors |
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Tom Louie is a long-time organizer, public policy advocate and media skills trainer. He works primarily with grassroots activists and community-based organizations on immigrant rights, public education and language rights issues. Over the last 4 years, Tom was the Director of Development and Communications at Political Research Associates (PRA). Prior to PRA, he directed programs at Mass. English Plus Coalition and Mass. Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, organizing statewide advocacy and communications campaigns. Tom was instrumental in pushing for the passage of legislative provisions protecting the rights of language minority students in Massachusetts and the state’s first Emergency Room Interpreter Services Bill. More recently, he led the research effort on the needs and status of programs for English Language Learners in the Boston Public Schools for the Citizens Commission on Academic Success. |
| Linda Stout Executive Director |
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Linda is an activist and a visionary. In her lifetime, she has identified injustice within her world, her country, her community, and her home. And like so many women - a handful recognized, most invisible - she has spoken up – committed to creating social change, determined to find a new way for a new democracy, and refusing to be silenced. read more> |
| Jane Wholey Kids Rethinking New Orleans' Schools, Director |
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Jane is the director of Kids Rethinking New Orleans’ Schools and co-partner of Esopus Creek Communications, a media relations organization that promotes progressive grassroots causes in the Americas. She is best known for her shrewdly engineered and visually striking grassroots media campaigns. She has personally directed two dozen campaigns since 1980 in unlikely locations like hurricane-ravaged schools, tenement rooftops, the Amazon rainforest and Appalachian strip mines. Jane is also a previous magazine journalist who has written on an eclectic range of topics in publications like The Village Voice, New York Magazine and Popular Science. She has been a columnist with The New York Times and House & Garden.
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