Betsy Leondar-Wright, Project Director and Senior Trainer
Betsy grew up in an upper-middle-class family in a mixed-class New Jersey suburb. A long-time activist for economic justice, she was the Communications Director for nine years at United for a Fair Economy,where she co-authored “The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the US Racial Wealth Divide” (2006). Since writing the book “Class Matters: Cross-Class Alliance Building for Middle-Class Activists” (2005), Betsy has led more than 100 workshops all over the US on classism, cross-class alliance building, and economic inequality. She is currently writing a book on class dynamics in activist groups as her sociology PhD dissertation at Boston College.
Chuck Collins, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Study and Trainer
Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy (IPS) and directs IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good. He is an expert on U.S. inequality and author of several books,
including Economic Apartheid in America: A Primer on Economic Inequality and Insecurity (New Press, 2005). He coordinates a national effort to preserve the federal estate tax, our nation’s only tax on inherited wealth. He co-authored with Bill Gates Sr., Wealth and Our Commonwealth, a case for taxing inherited fortunes.
In 1995, he co-founded United for a Fair Economy (UFE) to raise the profile of the inequality issue and support popular education and organizing efforts to address inequality. In 1997, he co-founded Responsible Wealth, a project of UFE to bring together business leaders and investors to publicly speak out against economic policies and corporate practices that worsen economic inequality. He was Executive Director of UFE from 1995-2001 and Program Director until 2005.
Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, Board President and Senior Trainer
Jerry grew up in La Habana, Cuba until his family moved in 1961 to Queens, New York City, when he was eight years old. Since then he has lived on the bridge of identity between middle class and working class Latino and white, heterosexual and gay, Catholic and Atheist/Buddhist. Jerry has worked as a trainer and consultant with the Institute for Peaceable Communities, the Center for Peaceable Schools, the National Coalition Building Institute, and the Association for Resident Controlled Housing. Currently he teaches Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and dynamic self-governance (Sociocracy). He served on the Board of United for a Fair Economy for a number of years before becoming a founding Board member of Class Action. He served as Class Action’s Interim Executive Director from February to September of 2010.
Joanne Sunshower, Women Building Bridges Project Director
Joanne Sunshower, M.Div., is the director of the Women Building Bridges Program, which connects religious congregations with low-income people and groups to projects based on mutual respect. Formerly she directed The Support Center, an organization that gave technical assistance tonon-profits in the Boston Area.
Rose Sackey-Milligan, Women Building Bridges Coordinator and Trainer
Rose Sackey-Milligan, Ph.D. is a socio-cultural anthropologist with thirteen years experience in social change philanthropy. She is the former Director of Programs of the Peace Development Fund and director of the Social Justice Program at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. As co-director of c-Integral, Inc. Rose shares responsibility for planning and designing programs for social justice workers interested in exploring an integral approach to activist well-being and the integration of spiritual practice with social action. She recently joined the staff of MassHumanities as a Program Officer responsible for grantmaking and oversight of the foundation’s Literature and Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care program.
Jennifer Ladd, Co-Founder and Senior Trainer
Jennifer Ladd, Ed.D. of Jennifer Ladd Consulting, is a philanthropic advisor as well as fundraising coach and group facilitator. She co- founded Class Action with Felice Yeskel. In her consulting work, she is dedicated to creating resilient community by helping resources move where they are most needed. She uses theater and play, as well as traditional tools and practices to help organizations and individuals achieve their goals. See www.jenniferladd.net for more information.
Felice Yeskel, Co-Founder
Class Action was co-founded by the late, great Felice Yeskel.
Sadly, Felice passed away in January of 2011.
Class Action Associate Trainers
Nicole Brown
Nicole Brown is a trainer and facilitator in New York City. She got her start as a database trainer for adults and a Community Organizing Fellow at grassroots organizations. She organized New York residents for anti-gentrification and affordable housing campaigns at Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE) and for the Working Families Party (WFP). She began her affiliation with Class Action as an intern while studying at Mt. Holyoke College in 2006.
Pamela Freeman, Curriculum Developer and Trainer
Pamela Freeman is a long time social activist. She has spent the last 30 years working on issues of social justice, nationally and internationally in variety of settings. She is the founder of the Philadelphia Black Women’s Health Project which advocates round health issues for Black women. She is a graduate of the School of Playback Theater, and the co-founder of Payback for Change a local improves company that focus on diversity issues. She also was a consultant/trainer for Spirit in Action, an organization that provides training around diversity and class issues for social activists. She is a social worker by training and currently teaches cultural diversity at Bryn Mawr College School of Social Work and Social Research as well as works as a therapist.
Holly Fulton
Holly Fulton has been a communication skills & diversity trainer and a French & ESL teacher in France, California,Massachusetts and Colorado. She lives in Concord, CA, with her husband, Bill Peebles, and gives talks and facilitates discussions after screenings of Traces of the Trade, a documentary film she participatedin which addresses the history of the slave trade, white privilege, reparations, and the need for more awareness about our nation’s history. Holly is active in music and theatre, and does volunteer work for Challenge Day, a company that provides high schools across the country with experiential programs that demonstrate the possibility of love and connection through the celebration of diversity, truth, and full expression. She does pet partner work in health care settings with her Golden Retriever, Cali. She is on the Community Practice Board and Chair of the Youth Committee of “Coming to the Table”, a national community that addresses healing from the legacy of slavery.
Zoe Greenberg, Filmmaker and Trainer
Zoe is the Writer/Director/Producer of “Enough: A Kid’s Perspective”, an 11-minute documentary film that explores issues of wealth, poverty, and what is “enough” through interviews with Philadelphia kids. She made the film when she was twelve, but she is sixteen now, and a junior at Springside School in Philadelphia. After the film was made, she teamed up with Felice Yeskel and co-led workshops for both kids and adults about the film and the issues it raises.
Her work garnered her the 2007 Princeton Prize for Race Relations in the city of Philadelphia. She has been featured in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Jewish Exponent, and some other places too. This year she is presenting to local teachers at the Multi-Cultural Resource Center in Philadelphia, as well as co-leading a workshop at the National Association of Independent Schools. She was inspired by Demetri Martin on the Daily Show and has now become Class Action’s trend spotter.
Phyllis Labanowski, Curriculum Developer and Trainer
Phyllis Labanowski is a stepmother, grandmother, godmother, and aunt-so she takes our future seriously. She suffered 12 years of bad teachers growing up in the public schools of rural, up-state New York-so she became a teacher. She was raised in a racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, working class, Polish family-so she became an activist. As a result of hearing the collective visions of activists and organizers nation-wide and the role of artists in those visions, she went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston at age 50. Now she is a graphic messenger supporting people and organizations that are doing good work in the world and is also working on contemporary public ceremony through Water Dances and Land Rituals.
Alan Preston, MBA
Alan is an independent consultant and experienced group facilitator who specializes in inspiring deep personal reflection and cultivating cross-class dialogue. Alan grew up with the advantages of class, race, and gender and is committed to using his privilege to challenge the growing economic inequality in society.
Alan has designed and facilitated programs around class, wealth and leadership for progressive foundations, giving circles, churches and nonprofit organizations. Alan draws on his training in the methods of Dr. Parker J. Palmer and the Center for Courage & Renewal in creating safe spaces for people to explore and talk about difficult issues such as money, class and power.
Alan has worked in the business, public and nonprofit sectors. Most recently he worked for four years as a philanthropy consultant and is himself active in several philanthropic networks (Social Venture Partners Seattle, Tides Center and Social Justice Fund Northwest.) His personal experience in philanthropy informs his professional practice.
Rachel Rybaczuk
Rachel Rybaczuk grew up in a racially diverse, economically poor urban neighborhood. As a first-generation college student at a wealthy, predominantly white school, issues of class and race became the guiding forces of her experience. Since then she has addressed issues of inequality as a community organizer, activist, trainer, and consultant for non-profit organizations, educational institutions, community groups, and social service agencies. She has facilitated many workshops and trainings about class, race, gender and sexuality as well as intersections between identities, oppression, and privilege to diverse audiences.
Tanya O. Williams
Tanya O. Williams, Associate Dean of Students for Diversity and Inclusion at Mt. Holyoke College, was born and raised in Houston, Texas by working-class African American Southern parents. Tanya first encountered experiences with racism and classism when she was bused to the predominately white, public Poe Elementary School in a wealthy part of Houston where she also attended junior high and high school. After attending college and working in higher education student affairs, Tanya returned to school to study Social Justice Education at the University of Massachusetts where she completed her doctorate. Her dissertation is on internalized racism and a path to liberation for African Americans.