CHILDREN'S DEFENSE FUND - Key Persons
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- Founder in Residence, PolicyLink Oakland, CA
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- Vice President of Institutional Advancement
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- National Director, Public Affairs
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- CEO and Chairman, Grubb Properties Atlanta, GA
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- Member of the Board of Directors
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- Director, Urban Superintendents Program and Professor of Practice, Harvard Graduate School of Education Cambridge
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- Secretary / Co - Founder and Vice Chair, the Polyphony Foundation Greenwich, CT
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- Chairman / President and CEO, Marguerite Casey Foundation
- President and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation
Dr. Carmen Rojas is the president and CEO of the Marguerite Casey Foundation. Prior to joining Marguerite Casey Foundation, Dr. Carmen Rojas was the co-founder and former CEO of The Workers Lab, an innovation lab that invests in entrepreneurs, community organizers, and government leaders to create replicable and revenue-generating solutions that improve conditions for low-wage workers. For more than 20 years, Carmen has worked with foundations, financial institutions, and nonprofits to improve the lives of working people across the United States.
Prior to building The Workers Lab, Carmen was the Acting Director of Collective Impact at Living Cities. She supported 22 of the largest foundations and financial institutions in the world in order to improve economic opportunities for low-income people. From 2008 to 2011, Carmen was the Director of Strategic Programs at the Mitchell Kapor Foundation, where she oversaw Green Access and Civic Engagement programs. Prior to this, Carmen was the Coordinator of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency's Task Force on African American Out-Migration to address African American displacement.
Carmen sits on boards of the Workers Benefit Fund, General Service Foundation, Blue Ridge Labs, Certification Associates, Beyond12, and on the Community Advisory Council for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Carmen holds a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley and was a Fulbright Scholar in 2007.
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- CEO
- Member of the Board of Directors
- President
- Co - Chair of the Ferguson Commission
- President & CEO of the Children 's Defense Fund
Wilson was appointed co-chair of the Ferguson Commission, which released the ‘Forward Through Ferguson: A Path Toward Racial Equity' Report, calling for sweeping changes in policing, the courts, child well-being and economic mobility in 2015. He currently serves boards for Duke Divinity School, the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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- Executive Director of the Children 's Defense Fund - NY
- New York State Director
Kercena A. Dozier is the executive director of the Children's Defense Fund-NY. Kercena has a wide array of substantive experience in fighting poverty in city and state government, on a grassroots level, in partnership with unions and as a staffer for a CDFI's community development corporation. Additionally, in a volunteer capacity, Kercena helped to start her church's social justice ministry. Previously Kercena served as the chief of staff for a New York State Senator whose district covered Harlem, East Harlem and the Upper West Side. As chief of staff, Kercena managed a Harlem in-district office and an Albany legislative office focused on voting reform, education justice, M/WBE support, criminal justice reform, millennial civic engagement, senior support, affordable housing, economic justice, gun violence prevention and equitable COVID19 response. Kercena also worked for the nation's largest social services agency, the NYC Department of Social Services (DSS), as the Director of Community Affairs for the NYC Department of Homeless Services (DHS). At DHS, Kercena was intentional about framing homelessness as a women of color and children of color racial equity issue that is rooted in systemic poverty. Through an initiative she created titled "I Am My Sister, My Sister is Me," she brought leaders in the faith, government, legislative and nonprofit sectors together to discuss the drivers of poverty and to inspire compassion and collaborative action to address citywide poverty and homelessness. Kercena's entire professional career has been focused on fighting poverty. She was the NYC Faith Organizer for the Fast Food Forward, Airport Worker Economic Dignity, and #RaiseUpNY campaigns. In each of these campaigns, the coalition that she was a part of achieved success at raising the wages of low-income workers in the fast food and airport industries as well as throughout the entire state through authentically engaging and organizing impacted individuals and communities.
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- National Director, CDF Freedom Schools®
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- Founder, Shape Tomorrow Houston, TX
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- Founder and Director, the Angelrock Project New York, NY
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- Founder
- Member of the Board of Directors
- President
- Founder and President Emerita
- Professor
Marian Wright Edelman, founder and president emerita of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), has been an advocate for disadvantaged Americans for her entire professional life. Under her leadership, CDF has become the nation's strongest voice for children and families. The Children's Defense Fund's Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.
Mrs. Edelman, a graduate of Spelman College and Yale Law School, began her career in the mid-60s when, as the first black woman admitted to the Mississippi Bar, she directed the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund office in Jackson, Mississippi. In l968, she moved to Washington, D.C., as counsel for the Poor People's Campaign that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. began organizing before his death. She founded the Washington Research Project, a public interest law firm and the parent body of the Children's Defense Fund. For two years she served as the Director of the Center for Law and Education at Harvard University and in l973 began CDF.
Mrs. Edelman served on the Board of Trustees of Spelman College which she chaired from 1976 to 1987 and was the first woman elected by alumni as a member of the Yale University Corporation on which she served from 1971 to 1977. She has received over a hundred honorary degrees and many awards including the Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, the Heinz Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy Lifetime Achievement Award for her writings which include: Families in Peril: An Agenda for Social Change; The Measure of Our Success: A Letter to My Children and Yours; Guide My Feet: Meditations and Prayers on Loving and Working for Children; Stand for Children; Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors; Hold My Hand: Prayers for Building a Movement to Leave No Child Behind; I'm Your Child, God: Prayers for Our Children; I Can Make a Difference: A Treasury to Inspire Our Children; and The Sea Is So Wide and My Boat Is So Small: Charting a Course for the Next Generation.
She is a board member of the Robin Hood Foundation and the Association to Benefit Children, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.
Marian Wright Edelman is married to Peter Edelman, a Professor at Georgetown Law School. They have three sons, Joshua, Jonah, and Ezra, two granddaughters, Ellika and Zoe, and two grandsons, Elijah and Levi.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Senior Managing Director
- Treasurer / Senior Managing Director - US Southeast and Metro Washington, DC Office Managing Director, Accenture Washington, DC, Arlington, VA
Martin "Marty" Rodgers is Senior Managing Director-US Southeast responsible for Accenture's business in 10 states, including the key markets of Washington, D.C., Charlotte and Atlanta. In this role, Marty focuses on bringing innovation to clients, attracting top talent and strengthening the company's impact in its communities.
In addition, Rodgers leads the company's largest office in North America that serves corporate, social sector, and Federal clients. It is home to nearly 8,000 employees; the company's global flagship for cybersecurity, the DC Cyber Fusion Center; two digital innovation studios focused on public sector; the Office of the Global CEO and CFO; Accenture Federal Services; Accenture Development Partnerships; Accenture's Nonprofit Practice and our National Office of Government Relations.
He currently serves on numerous local boards including the Greater Washington Board of Trade, United Way of National Capital Area, Federal City Council, and KIPP-DC. He is also a Member of the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. He also serves on two national boards: President Bush's Points of Light Foundation and the Children's Defense Fund.
Rodgers has more than 25 years of federal, commercial, nonprofit and multilateral project management experience. Rodgers specializes in business strategy, IT strategy and transformation, change management, program management, business case development and both business and enterprise architectures.
Prior to Accenture, Rodgers served as a leader in the national and community service and workforce skills fields, crafting numerous pieces of relevant legislation ranging from significant amendments in work-study and service-learning to notable laws including the King Holiday & Service Act of 1994, National & Community Service Trust Act of 1993, and School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1993.
Rodgers is an advocate of social responsibility and committed to diversity awareness and training as well as minority recruiting and awareness. Marty is engaged in HBCU recruiting and is the executive sponsor of the Accenture U.S. African-American Employee Resource Group.
Rodgers earned a B.A. in economics from the University of Notre Dame and an MBA from Harvard University. He serves on the Board of Trustees and Board of Fellows at the University of Notre Dame.
Rodgers lives in Falls Church, VA., with his wife and three children.
Job Titles:
- Deputy Director for the Children 's Defense Fund
- Interim Texas State Director
Michelle Castillo is the Deputy Director for the Children's Defense Fund - Texas, where she supports the organizational growth, development, and management of the Texas office. She guides the strategic campaigns for our health care, immigration, and youth civic engagement teams to partner with Texas families and children in transforming Texas to care for, center, and serve all of our children.
Before rejoining the CDF-TX team, she was the Chief of Staff for Texas State Rep. James Talarico where she built and managed a team whose legislative victories included capping insulin copays and enacting historic early childhood legislation such as the creation of the first Early Childhood Caucus of the Texas House of Representatives. Under Michelle's leadership, Rep. Talarico's team put the first limits on pre-K class sizes in Texas history, passed legislation to give all incarcerated minors a full high school education, fought classroom censorship legislation, introduced ambitious climate justice legislation, and freed millions of state dollars for social-emotional learning programs in Texas schools.
Prior to her time at the Texas Capitol, Michelle started the youth engagement work of CDF-TX by building a base of young people, providing training and guidance to affect the state legislative process on issues like common-sense gun reform, health care, voting access, and ending family detention and separation. Michelle has worked in the White House, Texas Senate, and returns to CDF-TX with vast experience in leading and executing statewide-advocacy campaigns for public education, voting rights, immigrant justice, and health care. She has previously served as Deputy Director of Advocacy at the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) where she led efforts to create a free resource hub for educators and students to access culturally-sustaining lesson plans and tools for the accurate teaching of history and to combat classroom censorship policies. While at Young Invincibles, a nonprofit advocacy group for Millennials, she was the Southern Policy Director and led the development of the regional office's state legislative and policy advocacy strategy to improve higher education, healthcare, and economic opportunity for young Texans.
Michelle is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard University. She lives in Austin with her partner, Emmanuel, and daughter, Eleanor, where they like to search for bichos and shaded playscapes.
Job Titles:
- Board Member for the Mississippi Head Start Association
- Director of the Children's Defense Fund 's Southern Regional Office
- Director, Southern Regional Office
- Project Director for the Southern Regional Council
Oleta Garrett Fitzgerald is Director of the Children's Defense Fund's Southern Regional Office (CDF-SRO), and also serves as the Regional Administrator for the Southern Rural Black Women's Initiative for Economic & Social Justice (SRBWI). SRBWI operates in 77 counties across the Black Belts of Alabama, Southwest Georgia and Delta Mississippi. CDF-SRO also serves as the lead for the W.K. Kellogg funded Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK) Initiative.
In 1970 she was employed by the Atlanta-based Southeastern Public Education Program of the American Friends Service Committee. In this position she participated in the Children's Defense Fund's Children Out of School in America, a national study of exclusion of children from public elementary and secondary schools; and monitored Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In 1976, she was hired as southern director for the Children's Foundation, which educated citizens and members of Congress about the need for expanded access to federal food programs.
In 1982 Ms. Fitzgerald became a project director for the Southern Regional Council working with rural electric power customers in 12 southern states to increase minority representation on rural electric cooperative boards. Moving back to her native Mississippi, she served as former Congressman Mike Espy's District Director from the beginning of his first term in 1987 until she joined the Clinton for President Campaign in 1992.
Before joining the Children's Defense Fund, Ms. Fitzgerald was appointed White House Liaison and Executive Assistant to then Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy by President Bill Clinton in January 1993. Shortly thereafter, she was named the Department's Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, where she worked with local, state and tribal governments; coordinated the Administration's long-term recovery of midwestern states affected by The Great Flood of 1993; and was a member of USDA's executive review panel selecting rural Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities.
Ms. Fitzgerald serves as a board member for the Mississippi Head Start Association, the Mississippi Children's Museum, the advisory committee for the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, and is a member of the State Children's Welfare Coalition and the Global Women's Action Network for Children. She also received honorary membership to Pi Alpha Alpha, the National Honor Society for Public Affairs & Administration from Mississippi State University in 1999. Ms. Fitzgerald holds a B.A. in sociology from Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the proud mother of four children, Rashida, Yusef, Layla and Joi.
Job Titles:
- Vice President, Strategy and Program
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- Pastor, First Missionary Baptist Church
The Reverend Dr. Don Darius Butler, a native of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is pastor of First Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama. From 2009 to 2019, he led Tabernacle Community Baptist Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Dr. Butler is currently a board member and recently completed two terms (2016-2021) as board chair for American Baptist College in Nashville, TN. He is a former board member for So Send I You, Inc., an African-American global missions initiative, Milwaukee Associates-In-Ministry, a multi-church collaborative in Milwaukee and was admitted to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Board of Preachers at Morehouse College, Atlanta GA.
In commitment to children, Butler's First Missionary Baptist Church established and operates its own school, the Julius R. Scruggs Child Development Center & Academy, and through its FMBC Foundation, contributes $15,000 annually to Village of Promise Family Enrichment Center supporting Alabama's first CDF Freedom School launched in 2013.
He is a summa cum laude graduate of American Baptist College who went on to earn the Master of Divinity degree from Vanderbilt University and Doctor of Ministry degree from Duke University. Butler's care for children and health was demonstrated professionally in service as chaplain for Norton Healthcare and Kosair Children's Hospital. Following the fatal shooting of a third-grader in Milwaukee, Butler launched a gun buyback effort which took more than 300 weapons off the street. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Butler elevated the conversation by hosting a town hall forum with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Geneva Reed-Veal, the mother of Sandra Bland.
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- California State Director and National Litigation Strategist
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- Member of the Board of Directors
- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of US Bancorp Community Development Corporation
Zachary Boyers is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of US Bancorp Community Development Corporation, providing leadership and strategic direction to a team of more than 400 people who manage tax credit and lending opportunities in the community development arena nationwide. Boyers currently serves on Children's Defense Fund's Haley Farm Development Task Force.
Boyers serves or recently served on national boards for Urban Strategies, Local Initiatives Service Corporation (LISC), the National Equity Fund and the National Advisory Council of the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University. Regional boards include service as the founding co-chair of Forward Through Ferguson, the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Regional Advisory Council of IFF. He was also a founding member of the Alliance for Economic Development as well as a member of the National Housing & Rehabilitation Association's New Markets Tax Credit Council and the New Markets Tax Credit Coalition.
Originally from upstate New York, Boyers received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Olin School of Business at Washington University.