THE ACTION LAB - Key Persons

Alex Rivera is a filmmaker who's been telling ground-breaking Latino stories for more than twenty years. His first feature film, a cyberpunk thriller set in Tijuana, Sleep Dealer, won multiple awards at Sundance and was screened around the world. Rivera's second feature film, a documentary/scripted hybrid set in an immigrant detention center, The Infiltrators, won both the Audience Award and the Innovator Award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and will be released theatrically in the U.S. in 2020. Rivera's work has been supported by the Ford Foundation, the Tribeca Film Institute, the Open Society Institute, and many others. Other recent collaborations include music videos produced by the National Day Laborer Organizing Network with artists Manu Chao, La Santa Cecilia, and Aloe Blacc, which have collectively received over 25 million views.

Alexa Vasquez

Alexa Vasquez is a trans woman of color and child migrant from the state of Oaxaca in Mexico. She is a multidisciplinary artist with a focus in painting, writing, and fashion. Her work is autobiographical, poetic and political and her visual artworks are inspired by Oaxaca, by the experience of a migrant longing to make it back home. Her writings are memories of growing up in an immigrant household, leaving home, transitioning, and exploring trans womanhood. She is currently beginning her journey in teaching. She joins The Action Lab out of a need for rest, travel, and exploration - life in the U.S is really tough (physically and mentally) for those living at the intersection of the Queer/Trans and Immigrant movement.

Alexa Vazquez

Job Titles:

Artist

Aliana Coello Exclusa

Job Titles:

Program Strategist, La Tejedora

Aliana is an Afro-Boricua decolonial feminist, facilitator, organizer, educator, and scholar from Santurce. Aliana is the Program Strategist at La Tejedora, where she will be supporting the programmatic and strategic development of La Tejedora's pillars and work with Puerto Rican youth.

Alice Mizrachi

Job Titles:

Artist
Multidisciplinary Artist

Alice Mizrachi is an interdisciplinary artist based in Nyack, New York. Alice's activist ideology is weaved into her studio, public art, and education practices. Her practice includes work as a muralist, fine artist, educator, sculptor, and curator. Family and community are also recurring themes that are approached as active spaces for shared engagement within the communities I work. She has shown with the Museum of the City of New York, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and The Albright-Knox Museum; taught at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Brown University, The Laundromat Project, and BRIC Arts. Currently, Alice has a public sculpture at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem entitled "Renaissance Women". Alice is a graduate of Parsons School of Design.

Alina Shen

Job Titles:

Take a Breath Fellow

Alina Shen is a born and raised New Yorker from Queens. She is the Lead Organizer of CAAAV Chinatown Tenants Union, a chapter of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities that organizes a base of working class Asian tenants, students, and workers in Manhattan's Chinatown and contesting for the future of a working class city.

Amy Carroll

Job Titles:

Equity - and Strategy - Focused Consultant

Amy Carroll has spent 20+ years in social justice movements as an organization builder, strategist, and lawyer. She currently runs an equity and strategy focused consulting practice, and has worked with clients including the Social and Economic Justice Leaders Project, Kairos Fellowship, Local Progress, Hester Street, and the Ford Foundation, among others. Before launching her practice in 2019, she served as the Chief of Staff for the Center for Popular Democracy, a national network of community-based organizations she co-founded in 2012. Prior to CPD, Amy worked as Legal Director at Make the Road New York, in nonprofit legal services, in progressive publishing, and in the labor movement. Amy received her J.D. from Yale Law School and B.A. from the University of Michigan.

Analilia Mejia

Job Titles:

Co - Executive Director at the Center for Popular Democracy
Co - Executive Director, Center for Popular Democracy

Analilia Mejia is the Co-Executive Director at the Center for Popular Democracy. She is a seasoned political strategist and Afro-Latina grassroots organizer focused on helping Black and Latinx working families who previously served as the Deputy Director of the Women's Bureau at the Department of Labor under the Biden Administration. The Women's Bureau is focused on policies and programs supporting women in the labor force. A daughter of immigrants, Analilia has dedicated her career to working toward a multiracial democracy and giving power to communities that have been historically excluded.

Andrew Friedman - Founder

Job Titles:

Co - Founder
Senior Director of Strategy

Andrew Friedman is Senior Director of Strategy and co-founder of The Action Lab. He is also the Director of the Initiative for Community Power at NYU School of Law. He founded the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), the largest federated network of community organizing groups in the United States, in 2012 and co-lead the organization for 10 years. Andrew previously co-founded and spent 15 years building Make the Road New York into the leading democratically run, immigrant-led community organization in New York State. Andrew helped found Local Progress, , a national network of progressive municipal elected officials. Andrew has taught at the NYU School of Law, Cardozo School of Law, the New School for Social Research and Columbia Law School. He is on the Board of Directors of Make the Road Action, Hester Street, the Action Lab and Local Progress, as well as the Editorial Advisory Board of The Forge. Andrew is a magna cum laude graduate of Columbia College and a cum laude graduate of the New York University School of Law. Most importantly, Andrew is the overjoyed and proud father of three beautiful boys.

Ani Cordero

Ani Cordero is a singer/composer and an activist. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, she began her music career in Atlanta, Georgia. She has released three studio albums, Recordar (2014), Querido Mundo ("Dear World") (2017) and El Machete (2019). She founded a bilingual band in the early 2000s and has toured with the bands Pistolera and Os Mutantes. She is also the co-founder of Puerto Rico Independent Music and Artists (PRIMA). She lives in New York City.

Anusha Mehar

Job Titles:

Producer
Poet, Producer, and Cultural Organizer

Anusha Mehar a Poet, Producer, and Cultural Organizer. Her work at the intersection of the arts/ the body/ the natural world centers the justice and dignity of youth, women and queer communities, locally and internationally, and implements language, somatics, mindfulness, restorative justice and tactile urbanism as tools for change. She is the Founding Principal of PANJA, where she spearheads public impact campaigns focused on ritual healing and liberation, and manages PR for partners throughout NYC and the Hudson Valley. Through PANJA, she serves as co-founder of the Sanctuary Healing Gardens on Crystal Lake, where she is co-creating safe space for BIPOC to connect with nature and mobilizing community in the direct action campaign to protect public lands as park lands in the city of Newburgh's 3rd Ward. Previously, Anusha has held leadership roles for orgs and projects such as RDAC-BX, Girls Write Now, the Newburgh Mural Project, Make the Road NY, Tesla, Girl Power, Girls Code Club, and the Harriet Tubman Journey to Freedom. She is a proud member of the Working Families Party's Regional and State Advisory boards and is distinguished as a 200-hr Certified Yoga Teacher, Ecological Citizen's Project (ECP) Regenerator, Good Work Institute Fellow, and Jeannette K. Watson Fellow. Her writing and photography about subcultures, the arts and the environment can be found in publications such as America's Quarterly, Outdoor Journal, Holysotked, and Redbull.

Aubin Pictures - Founder

Job Titles:

Director
Founder

Aubrey Patiño

Job Titles:

Executive Director of Avalon Housing

Aubrey Patiño currently serves as the Executive Director of Avalon Housing, whose mission is to build healthy, safe, and inclusive supportive housing communities as a long-term solution to homelessness. Aubrey is also a founding member, and core organizer with the Coalition for Re-Envisioning our Safety, an unarmed non-police public safety response program. She has been doing housing justice work for over 15 years; working with people experiencing homelessness, leading systems change initiatives, community organizing work, and innovative housing first programs. Aubrey holds a Masters Degree in Social Work from the University of Michigan with a concentration in Community Organizing.

Aura Lindo

Job Titles:

Coordinator
Take a Breath Fellow

Aura Lindo is SisterSong's Youth Coordinator. Aura originally moved to Atlanta to pursue an MPH but now has found their movement home in Southern Reproductive Justice. Aura received their Bachelor's in Anthropology and Gender Studies from the University of Central Florida in 2021. Aura is also on track to become a full spectrum doula, with birth and abortion already under their wing they now have their heart set to support expectant families as a postpartum doula. Though originally introduced to RJ through birth justice, their interests do not stop there. They have a deep love for curating spaces surrounding intimate healing, pleasure education and activism, as well as Black liberation. As an Afro-Caribbean, queer non-binary femme; resistance, joy, community, and duality are integral to Aura as a person and an advocate.

Awo Okaikor Aryee-Price

Okaikor is the second daughter of a Ghanaian immigrant father and African American mother from Newark (‘Nork'), New Jersey by way of her grandmother's migration from Okolona, Mississippi. Okaikor is a former classroom teacher, teacher-leader, educational justice organizer, a mother of two children, partner, and currently the Executive Director of the Education for Liberation Network; a national coalition of teachers, community activists, researchers, youth and parents who believe a good education should teach people-particularly low-income youth and youth of color-how to understand and challenge the injustices their communities face. Her organizing orientation is rooted in an intersectional, anti-racist, de/colonial Black feminist lens and framework, as well as core organizing principles she was mentored into by Black elders in the movement. Okaikor is also a steering committee member of Black Feminist Future, and a board member of a parent-led education justice organization, Parents Unified for Local School Education (PULSE), a Journey for Justice Alliance organization based in Newark, NJ.

Ayanna Desquitado

Job Titles:

Take a Breath Fellow

Beatriz Beckford

Job Titles:

Artist
Artist, Educator, and Strategist

Beatriz is an artist, educator, organizer and strategist who exemplifies experienced and intentional leadership in movements for social change. She brings 20 years of experience strategy planning, organizational development and advancement, community organizing, architecting multilayered campaigns, developing integrative arts and popular education programs, facilitation, process design, coalition and alliance building, capacity building, grassroots fundraising and development, and philanthropy expertise.

Ben Parisi

Job Titles:

Director of Development & Learning

Betsy MacLean

Job Titles:

Executive Director, Hester Street Community Development Expert

Betsy MacLean has been engaged in groundbreaking community development work for more than 15 years. As Executive Director of Hester Street, Betsy and her team devote urban planning, design, and development expertise to support community-led change. Hester Street creates and facilitates democratic, participatory planning and policy-making to advance racial and economic justice and to radically re-create cities shaped by low-income communities of color. Before HST, Betsy developed affordable housing and spearheaded the community-led design and construction of Brooklyn's first green public school. She created and directed a community development program in Cuba, and before that, worked as a carpenter. Betsy holds master's degrees in Urban Planning and International Development from Columbia.

Billy Wimsatt

Job Titles:

Writer, Journalist, Social Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Consultant

Billy Wimsatt has 20 years of experience in journalism (published in Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, etc), social entrepreneurship (co-founded several organizations including the League of Young Voters, Ready for Warren, Solidaire, and Rebuild the Dream), philanthropy (co-founded Solidaire and consults for individual donors and family foundations), and consulting (Obama Campaign, MoveOn.org, Rock the Vote, Ohio Democratic Party, Green For All).

Brian Satz

Job Titles:

Musical Director, Producer, Composer

Brianna L. Gibson

Job Titles:

Take a Breath Fellow

Brianna L. Gibson (they/she) is a Black queer direct action practitioner, facilitator, and trainer based in Washington, DC. They joined The BlackOUT Collective, a radical full service direct action organization, in September of 2015 as a Collective Member and joined the organization's Staff in May of 2019, where they currently serve as the Director of Action Strategy and Programs. Brianna has had the pleasure of training, facilitating, and collaborating with organizers across the United States in order to envision, strategize for, and organize towards a more liberated world for Black people, and by extension, all people. You can learn more about some of their work at www.blackoutcollective.org.

Catherine Gund

Job Titles:

Founder & Director of Aubin Pictures
Founder and Director, Aubin Pictures Producer, Director, Writer, Activist

Founder & Director of Aubin Pictures, Catherine Gund is an Emmy-nominated producer, director, writer & activist. Her media work focuses on strategic & sustainable social transformation, racial justice, arts & culture, HIV/AIDS & reproductive justice, and the environment. Her films have screened around the world in festivals, theaters, museums & schools; on PBS, the Discovery Channel, Sundance Channel, Netflix & Amazon Prime. Her films include: Aggie (Sundance, Doc Fortnight), Dispatches From Cleveland (CIFF, MSPIFF), and Chavela (Berlinale, Hot Docs, Ambulante). Gund currently serves on the boards of Art For Justice, Art Matters, Baldwin for the Arts, and The George Gund Foundation. She co-founded the Third Wave Foundation which supports young women and transgender youth, and DIVA TV, an affinity group of ACT UP/NY.

Chris Newman

Job Titles:

Legal Director & General Counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network
Legal Director, General Counsel, National Day Laborer Organizing Network

Chris Newman is the Legal Director & General Counsel for the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) based in its Los Angeles office. His main area of focus is to defend and advance day laborers' civil and human rights in the workplace. He was first hired in 2002 as their first attorney. He is the founding coordinator of the Wage Clinic and Legal Program at El Centro Humanitario para los Trabajadores, a day laborer worker center in Denver, CO. He is the recipient of an Academy of Educational Development New Voices Fellowship and is a Transatlantic Forum on Migration and Integration fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He earned his J.D. with honors from the University of Denver College of Law.

Christina Ramos

Job Titles:

Director of Community Initiatives

Cindy Lee Alves

Job Titles:

Take a Breath Fellow

Cindy Lee Alves is a sexologist and educator-activist centering Black and Indigenous folx across intersecting system-impacted identities. They have cultivated learning spaces for/with thousands of people on various topics related to sexuality education and empowerment, elevating pleasure and justice as intrinsic to liberation. She are also recognized for their contributions as a founding member of the Women of Color Sexual Health Network's Leadership Collective. As Founder of Ascension Institute, they offer services around wellness, entrepreneurship, and thriving as a whole-ass human.

Clyde Valentín

Job Titles:

Director, Ignite / Arts Dallas: People, Purpose & Place, SMU Meadows School of Art

Clyde Valentín was born and raised in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. He is the Cofounder and former Executive Director of Hi-ARTS (the Hip-Hop Theater Festival). He is the inaugural Director of Ignite/Arts Dallas: People, Purpose & Place, the community engagement initiative at SMU Meadows School of the Arts, whose mission is to challenge the imaginations of students and citizens to envision more just and vibrant communities through art and culture experiences. Clyde was a 2015 Community + Culture Fellow of the National Arts Strategies' Chief Executive Program. He is an advisory committee member of the Latinx Theatre Commons and has served as a consultant/panelist for many national arts organizations. He most recently joined the Board of Texans for the Arts, the state advocacy group for public funding in the Arts.

Coco Guthrie-Papy

Job Titles:

Take a Breath Fellow

Coco Guthrie-Papy is a community organizer, restorative justice practitioner, public policy nerd, and born-and-bred Savannahian. She works as Deep's Director of Public Policy and Communications, where she develops Deep's public policy and advocacy positions, as well as working as the organization's lobbyist. She received her training as a restorative justice practitioner at the International Institute for Restorative Practices, is a Highlander Education Center Greensboro Justice Fellow, a PEN Prison Writing Fellow, and a People for the American Way's Front Line Leader Fellow, and has served on southeastern regional boards such as Planned Parenthood Southeast and Georgia 9 to 5. She currently serves as a SWOP behind Bars prison mentor and as a legal observer for the ACLU of Georgia. Last but not least, she is a proud clinic escort and abortion doula serving the state of Georgia and believes we can never stop helping one another.

Colin Greer

Job Titles:

President, New World Foundation Author & Professor

Cynthia Renta

Job Titles:

Take a Breath Fellow

Dan Cantor - Founder

Job Titles:

Co - Founder
Co - Founder and Former Executive Director of the Working Families Party

Dan Cantor is co-founder and former executive director, Working Families Party Dan Cantor is co-founder and former executive director of the Working Families Party, a grassroots organization that fights for policies for working families, and works to bring a new generation of progressive leaders to political office. Under Cantor's charge, the WFP led successful campaigns to reform New York's Rockefeller Drug Laws, maintain access to affordable mass transit, and raise New York's minimum wage. His efforts have also contributed to the election of progressive candidates across the state - including mayors, state legislators, city council members and members of Congress. Prior to his work at WFP, Cantor's organizing efforts spanned the country. He was a union organizer in New Orleans and Detroit; a community organizer in Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri; and a political organizer and co-founder of the WFP predecessor, the "New Party." Cantor also worked as Labor Coordinator for Rev. Jesse Jackson's 1988 presidential campaign.

Daniel Coates

Job Titles:

Senior Organizer for the Justice and Innovation

Daniel Coates is a Senior Organizer for the Justice and Innovation Initiatives at The Action Lab. Daniel has over 15 years of community organizing and campaign experience. Most recently Daniel was the Interim Director of Immigration at Community Change. Before that he was the Immigration Field Director, where he managed the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a network of 37 of the country's premier immigrant rights organizations. Daniel has also worked for the Riders Alliance in New York City, the NYC Council, and for the Make the Road family. He spent eight years at MRNY and two year coordinating new Make the Road organizations across the country, including starting a new Make the Road in Nevada. Daniel has worked on issue and electoral campaigns on the local, state and federal levels. He holds a Masters Degree from NYU Wagner where he is currently also an Adjunct Professor, and an Undergraduate Degree from the University of Virginia. Daniel lives in Brooklyn and has three children.

Dasic Fernández

Job Titles:

Artist

Dasic Fernández is a Chiliean born street artist based in New York. His colorful graffiti street murals have received worldwide acclaim. Fernández's creations are the result of a self-discovery journey in constant development. By the age of 14, fascinated by the street culture from the 90's Chilean streets, he found a way to merge with art and become one through painting. With a high political and social influence in his work, and an architecture school background, his art reflects his vision of the world with strong emotions, allowing him to express his experiences through mural, canvas and floor paintings. Now, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, New York, Miami, and Riyadh are Dasic Fernandez's playground for expressing love and art.

David Riker

Job Titles:

Director
Editor
Filmmaker, Writer, Editor, Films Include: La Ciudad, the Girl, and Dirty Wars

David Riker is a screenwriter, director and editor, working in both fiction and documentary forms. His debut feature, La Ciudad (The City), was widely acclaimed for its neo-realist portrayal of Latin American immigrant life in New York City. As a screenwriter, Riker has won numerous awards including the NHK Award for Best American Screenplay at Sundance for his film The Girl, and the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance for his work with Alex Rivera on Sleep Dealer. Most recently, he co-wrote with Jeremy Scahill the documentary Dirty Wars about the global war on terror. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, as well as the Writers Guild of America award for Best Documentary Screenplay.

Derek Goldman

Job Titles:

Chairman of Georgetown University 's Department of Performing Arts
Chairman, Georgetown University Department of Performing Arts

Derek Goldman is Chair of Georgetown University's Department of Performing Arts and Director of the Theater & Performance Studies Program, as well as Co-Founding Director of the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics, with the mission to harness the power of performance to humanize global politics. He is an award-winning stage director, playwright/adapter, scholar, producer, and developer of new work, whose work has been seen around the country, off-Broadway, and internationally. He is the author of more than 30 professionally produced plays and adaptations, including work published by Samuel French, and he has directed over 100 productions. He is Vice-President of UNESCO's International Theatre Institute, and Founding Director of the Global Network of Higher Education in the Performing Arts.

Diego Gonzalez Cordero

Job Titles:

Take a Breath Fellow

Dina Ross

Job Titles:

Take a Breath Fellow

Dorian Warren

Job Titles:

Co - President, Community Change & Community Change Action
President of Community Change

Dorian Warren is the president of Community Change. A progressive scholar, organizer, and media personality, he has worked to advance racial, economic, and social justice for over two decades. He is driven by the conviction that only those affected by injustice can change their communities and public policies for the better. Growing up on Chicago's South Side, he learned firsthand the power of unions to spur economic opportunities. His great-grandparents were sharecroppers, his grandparents were janitors, and his mother taught in Chicago's public schools for more than 40 years. Guided by his understanding of inequality, he has devoted his life to building the power and capacity of low-income people. An alum of progressive organizations and universities, Dorian is an unparalleled force in progressive politics in America.

Dread Scott

Job Titles:

American Artist
Artist, What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag ( 1989 ) Shows at Whitney, MoMA PS1

Dread Scott is an American artist working within performance, photography, installation, and screenprinting, focusing on the current United States. He first gained notoriety with his first major work, What Is the Proper Way to Display a U.S. Flag in 1989. His work has been shown at the Whitney, Brooklyn Museum, and MoMA PS1. Selected solo works include 2008's Dread Scott: Welcome to America, 2010's Dread Scott: It's Right to Rebel and 2016's A Man Was Lynched By Police Yesterday. A few recent grants and fellowships include a Guggenheim (2021), Open Society Soros Equality Fellowship (2019), United States Artists Fellowship (2018) and Open Society Documentary Photography Project Moving Walls Grant (2017). He received a BFA from SAIC in 1989 and attended the Whitney's Independent Study Program in 1993.