ADVANCEMENT PROJECT - Key Persons
We envision a future where people of color are free - where they can thrive, be safe and exercise power. Driven by the genius of ordinary people and their movements, racism will no longer exist and justice will be radically transformed.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of Development
Andi Ryder is the Managing Director of Development. With more than 20 years of experience as a development executive, Andi has worked for organizations ranging from local community and direct service groups in Buffalo, NY, to social justice organizations working at the national scale. Her guiding principal has always been a passion for justice and opportunity for all communities.
As an activist and professional fundraiser, Andi has supported a range of issues including women's reproductive health care, immigration reform and criminal justice reform. She has worked for such organizations like Planned Parenthood, the Democracy Alliance and Center for Community Change, where she helped to launch a $50M campaign to support their poverty work. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Andi was the Chief Advancement Officer at Brave New Films where she helped to raise the necessary support to produce narrative changing content on a range of social justice issues.
Andi was born and raised in upstate New York and currently lives in Washington, D.C. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Niagara University.
Job Titles:
- CIO
- Member of the Board
- EVP Emeritus, AFL - CIO
Arlene Holt Baker's experience as a union and grassroots organizer spans nearly forty years. From the late 70's to the mid 90's she worked as a union organizer and later International Union Area Director in California for the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees national union. In her organizing and management role with the union she helped organize city, state, and university workers. While in California she was an activist with the Democratic Party and served as Vice Chair of the California Democratic Party from 1993 until 1996.
In 1995 Holt Baker came to the AFL-CIO as Executive Assistant to the Executive Vice President, Linda Chavez-Thompson and later became Assistant to AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. In her role at the AFL-CIO she has coordinated get out the vote campaigns, including the defeat of the 1998 anti-worker initiative, California Proposition 226. In 2000, she oversaw the AFL-CIO's "Count Every Vote" campaign in Florida. She was the first coordinator of the AFL-CIO Voice@ Work Campaign, a campaign to make it easier for workers to form and join unions.
From September 04 until January 06 Arlene Holt Baker served as President of the non-partisan voter education and mobilization organization, Voices for Working Families.
On September 21, 2006 Arlene Holt Baker was elected by the AFL-CIO Executive Council to serve out the unexpired term of Executive Vice President Linda Chavez-Thompson and in 2009 she was elected by the AFL-CIO Convention to serve as Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO becoming the first African American women to be elected by the AFL-CIO Convention to serve as one of the top three officers. She served in this capacity with the new leadership team of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, President of the AFL-CIO and Liz Shuler, Secretary Treasurer.
As Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO Arlene Holt Baker worked closely with community allies, immigrant rights groups, progressive partners, and AFL-CIO constituency groups to promote a shared prosperity for all agenda. She has used her position and her voice to advocate for and oversee mobilization efforts in the areas of immigrant rights, voting rights, marriage equality, public quality education and the rights of workers to form and join unions.
On September 11. 2013 Arlene Holt Baker retired from her position as AFL-CIO Executive Vice President. She continues to serve on a several boards that focus on reducing poverty, advancing comprehensive immigration reform and protecting voting rights; these include The Advancement Project and the Center for Community Change.
Arlene Holt Baker is married to Willie L. Baker, Jr., Retired Vice President, UFCW.
Board Chair | Co-Executive Director, The Highlander Research & Education Center
Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson is an Affrilachian (Black Appalachian) woman from the working class, born and raised in Southeast Tennessee. She is the first Black woman to serve as Co-Executive Director of the Highlander Research & Education Center in New Market, TN. As a member of multiple leadership teams in the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), Ash-Lee has thrown down on the Vision for Black Lives and the BREATHE Act. Ash-Lee has served on the governance council of the Southern Movement Assembly, the advisory committee of the National Bailout Collective, and is an active leader of The Frontline. She is a long-time activist who has done work in movements fighting for workers, for reproductive justice, for LGBTQUIA+ folks, for environmental justice, and more.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Attorney, Opportunity to Learn
Ashley Sawyer is committed to well-being and access to joy for young people, especially Black girls. Ashley is a Senior Staff Attorney on the Opportunity to Learn (Education) team at Advancement Project. From 2018-2021, she was the Senior Director of Campaigns at Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) in Brooklyn, NY. At GGE Ashley worked to ensure that cis and trans girls and non-binary youth are heard by elected officials and that their needs are reflected in city and state policy decisions. Ashley's life work is situated where education justice and the criminal legal system collide, to that end, she is committed to dismantling youth prisons, ending criminalization, and all forms of state violence, to build communities that invest in youth rather than harming them.
Ashley was previously a staff attorney at Youth Represent, where she led the representation of young people facing school suspension hearings and supported the organization's School Justice Project. She also represented young people in summons criminal court, licensing hearings, housing court, and other civil legal issues. She led the reentry legal representation for girls and femmes in NYC jail. Ashley helped develop and facilitate Know Your Rights workshops for youth in high schools and community-based organizations.
Ashley was previously a Stoneleigh Emerging Leader Fellow/Staff Attorney at the Education Law Center-PA, where she did policy projects and special education litigation on behalf of incarcerated youth, projects to dismantle the School-to-Prison Pipeline and led a project focused on reducing the disproportionate school exclusion of Black girls in Philadelphia. She was a part of the advocacy that pushed the School District of Philadelphia to end the practice of in-school suspensions for dress code violations which had a disproportionate impact on Black and Latine girls. Ashley is a 2015 alumna of the National Juvenile Justice Network-Youth Justice Leadership Institute. She earned her J.D. at the Howard University School of Law, and a B.A. in Political Science from Douglass College at Rutgers University. She is licensed in the State of New York.
Job Titles:
- Legal Administrative Assistant
Barbara Janifer comes to Advancement Project after working for OBVS Law firm and Fannie Mae. She has 22 years of professional experience as an Administrative Assistant. Janifer is an active community volunteer for her church; has done the Cancer and Aids Walk, volunteered her services in Girl Scouts and a cheerleader with her daughter. Janifer was on the elementary school PTA meeting board for 3 years. Janifer believes we can all make a difference in our community through volunteerism and supporting human rights groups. Mrs. Janifer is currently pursuing an A.A. Degree online at Penn Foster College in Scottsdale, AZ in Paralegal Studies. At the completion of her paralegal studies, Janifer plans to work toward pursuing her law degree.
Mr. Lee is a 45-year veteran civil rights lawyer. He served as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Justice, leading federal civil rights enforcement in the Clinton Administration from December 1997-January 2001. Prior to DOJ, Bill was Assistant Counsel in the New York office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the non-profit law firm founded by the late Justice Thurgood Marshall from 1974-83 and head of civil rights enforcement at the Center for law in the Public interest in Los Angeles from 1984-88. He was co-head of the NAACP LDF's Los Angeles office from 1989-97. After his service in DOJ, Bill prosecuted civil rights and disability rights actions with the San Francisco firm Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann & Bernstein, the Oakland firm Lewis, Feinberg, Lee & Jackson, PC. and the Denver-based Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center in its Berkeley office. Bill graduated from Columbia University Law School in 1974 and Yale College in 1971.
Job Titles:
- Paralegal & Research Coordinator
We envision a future where people of color are free - where they can thrive, be safe and exercise power. Driven by the genius of ordinary people and their movements, racism will no longer exist and justice will be radically transformed.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Executive Director
- Its New Deputy Executive Director
Carmen Daugherty joined Advancement Project as its new Deputy Executive Director in 2022. In this role, Carmen manages and supports directors in the Opportunity to Learn, Justice Project, and Power and Democracy programs and serves as the lead in cross-programmatic work. Prior to joining AP, Carmen served as Policy Director for Youth First Initiative, an organization for abolishing the abominable youth prison system across America. In that capacity, Carmen supported state-based campaigns to abolish youth incarceration and invest in community centered solutions She also previously served as Policy Director for Campaign for Youth Justice, focused on ending the prosecution and incarceration of youth in the adult criminal justice system. She began her legal career as staff attorney and Deputy Director for a DC based special education advocacy organization. Carmen has served on the committees for the American Bar Association's section on Civil Rights and Social Justice as well as DC based youth justice advisory groups. Carmen received her undergraduate degree from Vassar College and her Juris Doctor from Tulane University School of Law.
Born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Carmen currently resides in Maryland while her heart remains in New Orleans.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director of Development
Carolyn Cowen Nissen joined Advancement Project in September 2016 as the Development Manager for Foundation Relations and became Deputy Director of Development in 2020. She has a background in foundation management and civil rights. Carolyn worked for 2 and a half years at the Council on Foundations, cultivating relationships with funders and navigating the field of philanthropy. Prior to that, she worked at the DC Council with then Councilmember Tommy Wells, as a student attorney for the housing clinic at UDC, and as a legal intern with the Equal Rights Center.
Her top priority, personally and professionally, is to effectuate change in civil rights and work towards racial justice. She is an active member of Showing Up for Racial Justice and Stop Police Terror Project DC.
She is a native of St Louis, Missouri where most of her family still resides-Go Cardinals! Carolyn holds a J.D. from University of the District of Columbia and a B. A. in African and African American Studies from Earlham College.
Carolyn Thompson, a native of Kingston, Jamaica, has spent the past 20 years as a Miami-based political activist, committed to struggles against war and for equal justice, immigrants' rights and voting rights. Carolyn is a liaison among various grassroots organizations, civil rights groups, unions, the Caribbean community in the United States, Caribbean nations, and the African American community. She is focused on uniting these groups into a solid voting bloc for economic and political power. Carolyn is a former co chair, of the Haiti Solidarity Committee, and a past director of the Caribbean Power Vote. She works as a consultant for Sustainable Organic Integrated Livelihoods, which works to protect soil resources, empower communities and transform waste into resources in Haiti. Carolyn worked on educating Caribbean nations about the situation in Haiti, seeking to enlist help on a person-to-person, community- to-community basis. Thompson is currently pursuing a degree in public administration at Barry University, in Miami Shores, Florida.
Job Titles:
- Designer
- Co - Founder, the Soze Agency
Daniel Alejandro Leon-Davis is a designer, entrepreneur and cultural architect focused on using the power of art, media and entertainment for social good. He is a proud Co-Founder and former Partner at The Soze Agency, a trailblazing social impact agency dedicated to creating values-driven, innovative campaigns for social causes. A Venezuelan native, Daniel continues to use his experiences as a formerly undocumented immigrant and gay Latino as fuel to amplify the narratives of the underserved communities he's a part of. Influenced by his artistic roots, Daniel has helped curate art exhibits for the Smithsonian and United Nations headquarters alongside his team. Daniel currently leads creative design and strategy for the #IStandWithImmigrants Initiative. In addition, in 2020 he was chosen as a Civic Media Fellow for the University of Southern California Annenberg Innovation Lab where he spent the year researching the power of design to affect social change through fashion, art and the built environment. He currently resides in Miami with his husband Dom and is the proud father of 2 Mini Schnauzer puppies named Raj and Rowan.
Dijon Stokes (he/him) joined Advancement Project as a Program Associate in 2022. In this role, Dijon collaborates with colleagues on the Opportunity to Learn, Justice Project and Power and Democracy programs. Prior to Joining AP, Dijon served as a Advocacy Specialist and Voting Rights Project Manager at the American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia. In his capacity as the Voting Rights Project Manager Dijon focused on West Virginia's statewide elections and the improving the West Virginia Democratic process for voters as a lobbyist. Dijon transitioned into the role of Advocacy specialist where he focused on Federal, State, and Local policies that deal with the intersection of Voting Rights and Criminal and Juvenile Justice.
Prior to joining the ACLU, Dijon attended Howard University where he graduated with Bachelors in Economics and Political Science. During his time in college he interned with the Children's Defense Fund, Howard University General Counsel, and ACLU-WV twice as a Policy Fellow.
With 20 years of office management, administrative, and human resources experience, Glendale Clarkson is a vital member of the Advancement Project team. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Clarkson worked as director of operations at Renaissance West in Detroit, Mich., site director for Newton Learning, and program manager at Catholic Social Services of Oakland County. While residing in Detroit, Clarkson was an active community volunteer and member of St. Stephen A.M.E. Church. A graduate of LaSalle University with a B.S. degree in Business Administration, Clarkson's community service pursuits include collecting food and clothing for victims of domestic violence and mentoring young women by assisting them with building their job skills and teaching them how to dress for success. For a number of years, Clarkson served as trustee at her church and was a volunteer gift shop coordinator.
Job Titles:
- Assistant to the Executive Director
- Onboarding Coordinator / Executive Assistant
Hana Fleary is the assistant to the Executive Director. She also serves as the Onboarding Coordinator supporting the Human Resource Manager. Prior to joining Advancement Project, she worked as an Administrative Assistant for one of the area's Top 10 Accounting firms. She also has a background in human resources, event planning, design and technical support. In addition to her professional experience, Hana has an outstanding public service background where she provided computer training to rural communities in Sierra Leone, Africa and co-organized a fundraising tour to highlight the issue of maternal and infant mortality in Africa as well. She is also involved in community organizing efforts locally.
Job Titles:
- Chairman in Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law
Franita Tolson is the George T. and Harriet E. Pfleger Chair in Law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. She also holds a courtesy faculty appointment in the Political Science and International Relations Department at the USC Dornsife College of Letter, Arts and Sciences. Her scholarship and teaching focus on the areas of election law, constitutional law, legal history, and employment discrimination. She has written on a wide range of topics including partisan gerrymandering, political parties, the Elections Clause, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
Her research has appeared or will appear in leading law reviews including the Yale Law Journal, Harvard Law Review, Stanford Law Review, California Law Review, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, and Vanderbilt Law Review. Tolson is one of the coauthors of the leading election law casebook, The Law of Democracy (Foundation Press, 6th ed., forthcoming 2022). Her forthcoming book, In Congress We Trust?: Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era, will be published in 2023 by Cambridge University Press.
As a nationally recognized expert in election law, Tolson has written for or appeared as a commentator for various mass media outlets including The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Bloomberg Law. She has testified before Congress numerous times on voting rights issues. She has also authored a legal analysis for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Richard Durbin, that would explicitly protect the right to vote. During the fall of 2020, Tolson worked as an election law analyst for CNN. She currently co-hosts an election themed podcast, Free and Fair with Franita and Foley, with Ned Foley of The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law.
Prior to joining USC, Tolson was the Betty T. Ferguson Professor of Voting Rights at Florida State University College of Law and a visiting assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Law. Before entering academia, she clerked for the Honorable Ann Claire Williams of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the Honorable Ruben Castillo of the Northern District of Illinois.
Tolson is a graduate of the University of Chicago Law School, where she was the Walter V. Schaefer Visiting Professor of Law during the Spring 2021 academic quarter.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of Communications
We envision a future where people of color are free - where they can thrive, be safe and exercise power. Driven by the genius of ordinary people and their movements, racism will no longer exist and justice will be radically transformed.
Job Titles:
- Vice - Chair of the Board
- Board Vice - Chair Actor and Activist
A native of Chicago and graduate of Temple University, Jesse began his professional career teaching American, African and African-American History in low-income Philadelphia public charter schools. From there Jesse moved to Brooklyn, New York and, after working in Manhattan law firms, began his professional acting career, performing off-Broadway at The Cherry Lane Theatre, under the direction of award-winning playwright Edward Albee in "The Sandbox." Jesse is presently starring on Broadway in "Take Me Out." His feature credits includes ABC's hit series "Grey's Anatomy", "Lee Daniels' The Butler", "Brooklyn's Finest", "The Cabin in the Woods", "Jacob's Ladder", "Random Acts of Violence", and the Western,"They Die By Dawn."
Williams founded his own production company, farWord Inc., and executive produced Question Bridge: Black Males, a series of transmedia art installations, films, curriculum, and website. The exhibition is part of the permanent collection at the National Smithsonian Museum of African-American History and Culture and the Brooklyn Museum. He served as senior producer and correspondent for the EPIX docuseries America Divided with Norman Lear. He executive produced the documentary Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement. Williams gained international renown for his now famous 2016 BET Humanitarian Award Acceptance Speech where he eloquently confronted a range of sociopolitical issues.
Williams is among the most prominent and impactful entrepreneurial faces in tech today, with three leading mobile apps on the market. He launched BLeBRiTY, a charades inspired mobile game that immediately shot to #1 on the Apple App Store charts in two categories. He's also a co-owner of Scholly, a mobile app connecting students to over $100 million dollars in scholarships. Williams is also co-founder of the mobile app, Ebroji, the first culturally curated GIF keyboard centering Black, brown and LGBTQI culture. In addition, he served as Curator of Tech and Innovation at the inaugural ComplexCon. Williams hosts the Open Run Podcast, which he owns in partnership with LeBron James' digital network, Uninterrupted. He is also the youngest to sit on the Board of Directors for both Advancement Project, a leading national civil rights advocacy organization and Harry Belafonte's arts and social justice organization, Sankofa.org.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Attorney
- in 2016 As a Skadden Fellow
- Senior Staff Attorney, Opportunity to Learn
Jessica Alcantara is a Senior Staff Attorney in the Opportunity to Learn program at Advancement Project. Jessica supports Black and Latinx communities on issues of the school-to-prison pipeline and school closures, with the goal of increasing Black and Latinx students' access to quality, sustainable community schools, as well as winning police free schools. She also works on the intersection of education law and immigration law.
Jessica joined Advancement Project in 2016 as a Skadden Fellow. She is a graduate of Dartmouth College, where she earned a B.A. in Geography and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies, as well as a minor in Spanish Language and Literature. Following her time at Dartmouth she joined the Peace Corps, serving for two years as a Youth Development Volunteer in Azerbaijan. Jessica attended Columbia Law School, where she served as the Submissions Editor of the Columbia Journal of Race and Law. While at Columbia, Jessica also served as Admissions Chair of both the Black Law Students Association and the Latino Law Students Association, and was also involved with the Student Public Interest Network. She is an alumna of the Prep for Prep program in New York City, where she has also taught. Prior to law school, she earned a M.A. in Latin American and Latino Studies at Fordham University.
Joe Alvarez brings a lifetime of experience on the front lines of the labor movement fighting for racial justice, civil rights, peace, workers' and immigrants' rights. In 2005, he left his position with labor and became a founding partner of the Alvarez Porter Group, an organization development consulting firm that specializes in work with mission-driven organizations focused on labor rights and other social justice issues.
Joe spent decades organizing industrial workers and labor support for the civil rights movement throughout the south. As the national political director of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union and UNITE, he developed innovative programs promoting grassroots civic engagement and participation. And as the Northeast Regional Director of the AFL-CIO, Mr. Alvarez designed and co-led a major national, state-by-state campaign to revitalize and reorganize state and local AFL-CIO bodies. Joe's work with unions has involved him in a number of industries, including retail, food processing, arts and entertainment, education, transportation, public sector, construction, and health care. At the AFL-CIO, Mr. Alvarez was also a leader in engaging the labor movement on fighting for immigrant rights, and was a national organizer and leader of the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride in 2002.
Joe has also worked with national, state, and local union federations, as well as with unions in Indonesia, Mexico, Canada, and the United Kingdom. His work among non-profits has been with organizations involved in community organizing, civil rights, housing, human rights, workers' rights, and environmental sustainability.
In 2000, Joe helped found the New York State AFL-CIO/Cornell Union Leadership Institute, where he still teaches. He is also a Fellow of Cornell University's Worker Institute.
Joe is married with two adult children and an expanding number of grandchildren. He lives in Yonkers, NY with his wife, Sally.
Job Titles:
- Senior Campaign Strategy Associate, Rights Restoration
We envision a future where people of color are free - where they can thrive, be safe and exercise power. Driven by the genius of ordinary people and their movements, racism will no longer exist and justice will be radically transformed.
Joycelyn Tay joined Advancement Project National Office in January 2019. She serves as the organization's Human Resources Manager. Joycelyn has more than 15 years of experience in Human Resources and has worked both in the non-profit and for-profit sector.Originally from Ghana, Joycelyn has a background in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. She is an expert in developing and tracking strategies in the areas of talent management, leadership development, performance management, anger management, labor relations and organizational development. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Joycelyn was senior business partner at Venator Americas, LLC. She holds a Master's degree from the University of Ghana in Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
Dianis has served as a lawyer, professor and civil rights advocate in the movement for racial justice. Hailed as a voting rights expert and pioneer in the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, Dianis leads Advancement Project National Office's work in combating structural racism in education, voting, policing, criminal justice and immigration.
Dianis was raised in Hollis, Queens by two Harlem natives - one, an educator and community activist; the other a veteran of the nation's segregated Army. It was this upbringing that sparked Dianis' passion for civil rights. Her protest of racism as a student at the University of Pennsylvania and survival of job discrimination prompted Dianis to pursue a career in movement lawyering. She later graduated from Columbia University School of Law, received a Skadden Fellowship and went on to become the Managing Attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund.
Since joining Advancement Project at its inception in 1999, Dianis has worked with grassroots organizations to wage successful campaigns using litigation, advocacy and communications. Dianis authored groundbreaking education reports including: Opportunities Suspended and Derailed: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track, detailing the unnecessary criminalization of students by their schools. Advancement Project National Office's work with grassroots partners significantly helped decrease student suspensions and arrests in Denver, Baltimore and school districts throughout Florida.
Dianis helped start Advancement Project's Voter Protection program during the election debacle in Florida in 2000, representing the NAACP. In the ensuing two decades, the organization partnered with grassroots and national organizations to thwart voter suppression efforts like strict voter ID requirements, cuts to early voting, the closure of polling locations and felony disenfranchisement. Advancement Project National Office is proud to be a founding member of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, recently credited with the historic passage of Amendment 4 to the Florida's state constitution. The measure automatically restores the voting rights of those with prior felony convictions.
Dianis has served as a lawyer, professor and civil rights advocate in the movement for racial justice. Hailed as a voting rights expert and pioneer in the movement to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, Dianis leads Advancement Project's work in combating structural racism in education, voting, policing, criminal justice and immigration.
Job Titles:
- Staff Attorney, Justice Project
Kaili Moss (she/her) joined the Advancement Project in 2022 as a Justice Project Staff Attorney. Prior to joining AP, Kaili was a Legal Fellow at the American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky. During her fellowship, her work mainly focused on students' rights, First Amendment law, and reproductive justice post-Dobbs. She also litigated cases at the state and federal level against police and prisons, including a class action lawsuit against Louisville Metro Government and the police department on behalf of local groups and activists whose constitutional rights were violated during the uprisings following the murder of Breonna Taylor.
Kaili is a first-generation college and law student. She is a graduate of George Mason University, where she earned a B.S. in Criminology, Law, and Society with a minor in Psychology. She earned her JD from William and Mary Law School, where she was active in her school's Black Law Students Association and an Articles Editor for William and Mary's Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice. As a law student, she worked as a student attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Eastern Virginia and as a law clerk at Bread for the City, a Washington DC-based civil rights organization. In 2017, she was the recipient of the Oliver Hill Civil Rights Scholarship. Following graduation, she clerked for the Honorable Tiffany H. Anderson in Prince George's County, Maryland.
Kaili is also the author of "Black Hair(tage): Career Liability or Civil Rights Issue?" published in Volume 25 of William and Mary's Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice.
Kaili is licensed to practice law in Maryland and Kentucky.
Job Titles:
- Director of Advancement Project National Office 's Opportunity to Learn
- Program Director, Opportunity to Learn
Katherine Dunn is the Director of Advancement Project National Office's Opportunity to Learn program, which supports campaigns across the country in the fight for quality education and an end to the school-to-prison pipeline. Prior to joining Advancement Project, she spent over a decade working towards education justice in the South. Katherine served as the Regional Policy Analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, where she led the SPLC's children's rights policy work, as a General Attorney at the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, enforcing federal civil rights laws in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee schools, and as a Program Director at the Southern Education Foundation, where her work focused on research and advocacy to ensure equity in public education in the South.
Katherine is past Co-Chair of the American Constitution Society's Georgia Lawyer Chapter and the Georgia chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the 2018 LEAD Atlanta class. She was named to the Daily Report's 2020 class of Georgia lawyers "On the Rise." She is an ambassador with the Partnership for the Future of Learning and she serves on the board of Sur Legal Collaborative.
Job Titles:
- Development Manager
- Development Manager of Donor Relations
- National Office in 2020 As the Development Manager
Laila Al-Soulaiman joined Advancement Project National Office in 2020 as the Development Manager of Donor Relations. With experience in individual giving and multi-channel fundraising campaigns, Laila works to build a strong and broad base of our supporters.
Previously, Laila worked within Muslim and immigrant community organizations in development and project roles. Most recently, she led annual giving at Muslim Advocates by combining faith and advocacy appeals to combat anti-Muslim bigotry. Laila also held positions at the American University in Cairo, the Change Agency in Pittsburgh, and the Islamic Center of Pittsburgh.
A native Pittsburgher by way of the Middle East, Laila began using storytelling and public art at an early age to engage her local community in the ongoing conflict in Syria. Her experience as a youth activist shaped her commitment to racial justice and continues to drive her to use philanthropy to fuel change.
Laila graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a bachelor's degree in political science and concentrations in Arabic and public service.
LaVita Gunby joined Advancement Project National Office in 2020 as our Development Associate. In her role, LaVita manages our database, as well as support strategic fundraising efforts. A Washington, DC, native, LaVita attended school in Northern Virginia, where she studied IT, business and marketing. Prior to joining Advancement Project National Office, LaVita worked as a Communications and Development Database Coordinator where she streamlined communications processes and strategy, while maximizing data entry, reporting, and donor management. As a result of experiencing first-hand the unfortunate ramifications of racial injustice in various communities and environments throughout her life, LaVita is committed to advancing the needs for underserved and under-resourced communities, as well as inspire greatness in those same demographics beyond any limiting circumstances. LaVita is a foodie who loves sweets, and writes poetry in her free time.
Job Titles:
- Director of Justice Project
We envision a future where people of color are free - where they can thrive, be safe and exercise power. Driven by the genius of ordinary people and their movements, racism will no longer exist and justice will be radically transformed.
Job Titles:
- Managing Director of Campaign Strategy
In conjunction with Advancement Project's staff attorneys and communications team, Maria supports the organizing strategies for our Ending the Schoolhouse to Jailhouse program partners. She is the campaign strategist for our #PoliceFreeSchools campaign and works with our Justice Project team to call for police accountability.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director of the Justice Project
- Deputy Director, Justice Project
Marie Ndiaye is the Deputy Director of the Justice Project at the Advancement Project. For the last ten years Marie has worked in the criminal legal system as a public defender and policy advocate. She previously directed the Legal Aid Society's Decarceration Project where she supervised a team of lawyers, paraprofessionals and social workers litigating pretrial detention. There, she also played an integral role in the statewide bail reform campaign(s) and fought to pass, and protect the law from unjustified attacks. Prior to that Marie was the Senior Policy Manager at the Katal Center for Health, Equity and Justice, where she focused on pretrial justice - bail, discovery, speedy trial - and parole legislative reform. Marie began her legal career at the Legal Aid Society in 2012 as a Staff Attorney in the Criminal Defense Practice Manhattan trial office. A proud honorary New Yorker; Marie is a graduate of the City University of New York's Hunter College. She received her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 2012.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Attorney, Power & Democracy
We envision a future where people of color are free - where they can thrive, be safe and exercise power. Driven by the genius of ordinary people and their movements, racism will no longer exist and justice will be radically transformed.
Job Titles:
- Development Manager of Grants & Institutional Relations
Michael Reddy joined Advancement Project National Office in March 2021 as the Development Manager of Grants & Institutional Relations. Prior to that, he served as the Development Manager at Holistic Life Foundation in Baltimore, MD and Development Associate for Institutional Giving at the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Michael got his start in development by helping his mother write grants for her small, community-based non-profit in rural Mississippi. The conversations that they had about organizing, program design, and, most importantly, the collective power of local people to effectuate change in their community ground the way that he approaches his work. Being able to support the work of organizations working on behalf of marginalized people sustains him both personally and professionally.
Michael holds a Master of Arts in English from Middlebury College (Bread Load School of English) and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Roanoke College. He lives in Baltimore with his two sons.
Monica M. Clark is a graduate of Harvard College and Georgetown University Law Center, where she externed at Advancement Project as part of a Community Lawyering seminar. After law school, Monica served as an associate at Latham & Watkins and worked with Advancement Project to organize a Virginia Civil Rights Restoration Clinic to help restore voting rights in Virginia, which permanently disenfranchised citizens with past felony convictions at the time. After Latham, Monica was Senior Counsel and Counselor to the General Counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency in Washington, D.C.
Currently Monica is Senior Legal Counsel at Primient, a provider of food and industrial ingredients, serving as a strategic legal partner to the company's North American and LATAM business. She is a Link Unlimited Scholars mentor and President of the Harvard Black Alumni Society. She is also an Ambassador for the National Museum of African American History & Culture.Monica was born and raised in Queens, NY. She currently lives in Chicago with her husband Will and their cat and dog.
leads the Hill-Snowdon Foundation in its philanthropic and programmatic work, operations, and partnerships within the community. Nat manages HSF's Youth Organizing and Fund for DC programs. He is also responsible for developing learning and leveraging opportunities in these program areas. Nat served as the co-chair for the Funders Collaborative for Youth Organizing as the organization established itself in the field. Nat led the development of and served as the co-chair for Grantmakers for Southern Progress, a network of local, regional, and national funders committed to leveraging resources to help build a vibrant and enduring infrastructure for social justice in the US South. In response to the racial justice uprisings of 2020, Nat is leading the development of the Freedom Funders - a philanthropic community of purpose, will, support and action dedicated to building a philanthropy for Black Freedom and Liberation. Nat is also currently serving on the Tides Advocacy Board.
Nat has over twenty years of funding experience and has focused on community organizing, youth organizing, Black-led organizing, and social justice organizing in the US South. His background also includes research on the socio-political development of African American youth activists, social movements, social oppression and liberation psychology; tenant organizing, and non-profit management consulting. Additionally, Nat has served as Assistant Professor of Black Studies for the State University of New York at New Paltz, Senior Program Associate for Community Resource Exchange in New York City, and Director of Organizing for the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board in New York City. Nat holds a B.A. in Psychology from Morehouse College, as well as an M.A. and Ph.D. in Community Psychology from New York University.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Communications Director
- Deputy Director of Communications
Nidya Sarria-King is the Deputy Communications Director at the Advancement Project, where she works on strategic communications strategy to shift narratives on race and justice.
She previously served as the Media Relations Director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the largest membership-based alliance of women of color in the United States. In this capacity, Nidya directed press strategy for the organization, uplifting the stories of a mostly undocumented, low-wage workforce enduring the unequal impact of a devastating pandemic.
Prior to that, Nidya worked at Amnesty International USA, a global movement of people fighting injustice and promoting human rights. While at Amnesty, she led media strategy around asylum and migrant rights at the US-Mexico border, while also securing press coverage for human rights issues around the world including protecting the right to protest, halting war crimes and mass atrocities, and ending US gun violence.
Outside of work, Nidya sits on the Board of Directors of ASISTA Immigration Assistance, an organization advancing the dignity, rights, and liberty of immigrant families who have survived violence. She holds a Masters in Public Administration from Florida International University.
Nidya lives in Takoma Park, Maryland with her husband, daughter, and two dogs.
Job Titles:
- Education Fellow
- Right to Education Fellow and Staff Attorney, Opportunity to Learn
Noelia Rivera-Calderón (she/they) is the Right to Education Fellow & Staff Attorney on the Opportunity to Learn team. Noelia's career has focused on ensuring that all oppressed students can access an abundant, liberatory education.
Noelia began as a middle school social studies teacher before attending Temple University Beasley School of Law, where they currently serve as an adjunct professor. At Temple, she served as Program Director of the School Discipline Advocacy Service, an organization through which law students serve as advocates for students facing school disciplinary proceedings. Following law school, Noelia was the Pride Law Fund Fellow at National Women's Law Center, where she published the report "We Are Not Invisible: Latina Girls, Mental Health, and Philadelphia Schools." This report inspired policy change efforts at the local, state, and federal levels. Noelia also published an LGBTQ advocacy curriculum co-written with student leaders called "Brick by Brick," which has been taught in three cities nationwide. Following this work, Noelia clerked for the Honorable Nitza I. Quiñones Alejandro, District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Noelia is also the author of "Arrested at the Schoolhouse Gate: Criminal School Disturbance Laws and Children's Rights in Schools," published in the National Lawyers Guild Review, as well as multiple op-eds published in outlets including The Hill, Remezcla, and Refinery29. In 2020, Noelia was named a Temple University Alumni Association 30 Under 30.
Job Titles:
- Senior Staff Accountant in
Sara Gebretsadik is a Senior Staff Accountant in Advancement Project's finance department with over eight years of private and public accounting experience. Prior to joining Advancement Project, Sara worked at Atlantic Council of the US, Echo360, Inc. and IBX Advertisement as a Senior Staff Accountant. Sara started her career as an auditor at a big four accounting firm, Ernst and Young, in Ethiopia.
Sara holds a BA in Accounting from Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia. Currently, she is studying for her Master's in accounting at George Mason University. After the completion of her Master's degree, Sara plans to be a Certified Public Accountant.
Job Titles:
- Senior Campaign Strategy Associate
We envision a future where people of color are free - where they can thrive, be safe and exercise power. Driven by the genius of ordinary people and their movements, racism will no longer exist and justice will be radically transformed.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder
- President of the Board
Before co-founding Advancement Project, a public policy change organization rooted in the civil rights movement, Steve English was a partner in the Los Angeles office of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius for twelve years, helping manage a 20-lawyer litigation department.
Job Titles:
- Founder of Sankofa Legacy Advisors
Thomasina Williams partners with business-owning families and families of financial wealth to cultivate "the family side" of family business and family wealth. She helps families optimize their relationships, have productive conversations about sensitive subjects, navigate their inevitable differences, and work together to make decisions about their shared assets and future.
Her work on this often-missing piece of the generational success puzzle extends to helping family advisors, family offices, family foundations, and staff of other family owned or controlled entities build stronger working relationships with their family clients and employers.
An accomplished lawyer and philanthropy strategist, Thomasina is the founder of Sankofa Legacy Advisors. She was the first Family Dynamics Consultant Wells Fargo Private Bank hired to come in-house and play a leadership role in building a new line of business to help its ultra-high net worth clients navigate generational transitions and strengthen family governance. Clients have described Thomasina as their "high-beams," lighting the way and guiding them through unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory.
A student and practitioner of Bowen Family Systems Theory since 2015, Thomasina applies a family systems lens to help family members individually and collectively identify, simplify, and navigate the relationship patterns that drive their ability to sustain family well-being and financial wealth across multiple generations. As a result of working with her, family members begin to see and explore possibilities they had not considered previously, leading to increased self-awareness, greater systems awareness, and stronger one-on-one family relationships, as well as reduced family financial risks.
Learning about the "shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves in three generations" phenomenon, by which 70 percent of families lose their wealth by the end of the third generation - and realizing that her own family was among these alarming statistics - fuels Thomasina's passion to help families beat the odds and build enduring legacies.
As a member of the advisory board of privately held Purposeful Planning Institute and the board of nonprofit Galliard Family Business Advisor Institute, Thomasina serves as an advisor to advisors within her field. Beyond the field of family advising, she serves on the board of SIY Global, whose science-based programs help individuals and teams develop social and emotional intelligence to improve engagement and well-being at work. Additionally, she is a member of the advisory board of Enterprising Women magazine.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director, Opportunity to Learn
Tyler Whittenberg rejoined Advancement Project National Office as Deputy Director of Opportunity to Learn in 2021. In this role, he supports grassroots campaigns led by youth of color fighting to end the criminalization of Black and Latine students and create liberatory systems of education. Prior to joining AP, Tyler was Chief Counsel for Justice System Reform at Southern Coalition for Social Justice.
Tyler's entire career has been dedicated to ending the school-to-prison pipeline and building a liberatory education for Black and Latine youth. He began his career as an 8th grade social studies teacher in Columbia, South Carolina. He then received a masters degree in Politics and Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, focusing on school-to-prison pipeline issues and the growing effort to privatize public education. Tyler subsequently advocated for students' rights as an Education Policy Fellow with the North Carolina Justice Center's Education Law Project.
Tyler graduated from Tulane University Law School after completing an Ella Baker Fellowship with the Center for Constitutional Rights. Throughout law school, he co-directed Stand Up for Each Other (SUFEO)-a student-led organization representing youth who were suspended and expelled from public schools in New Orleans. For these efforts, Tyler was awarded the Louisiana State Bar Association's 2014 Student Pro Bono Award. Tyler also advocated for the rights of youth in the justice and foster care systems as a Staff Attorney with the Youth Law Center and helped jurisdictions throughout the U.S. reduce racial and ethnic disparities in youth-serving systems while a Site Manager with the W. Haywood Burns Institute.
We envision a future where people of color are free - where they can thrive, be safe and exercise power. Driven by the genius of ordinary people and their movements, racism will no longer exist and justice will be radically transformed.