Who We Are
Click on staff names for biographical information.
Class Action Staff
Dana Gillette
Associate Director of Development and Communications
Jerry Koch-Gonzalez
Interim Executive Director
Felice Yeskel
Co-Founder and Senior Program Specialist
Class Action Board
Class Action Associates
Dana Gillette, Associate Director of Development and Communications
Coming from an upper-middle class family in a small town, Dana experienced class culture shock when she attended Loomis Chaffee, a boarding school in Connecticut. Her experiences there, and her studies of race, class and gender in college spurred her commitment to social justice work.
Dana co-chaired the founding board of Resource Generation, a national organization promoting innovative ways for young people with wealth to align their personal values and political vision with their financial resources. Her volunteer work has included serving on the board of Women in Philanthropy, chairing the finance committee at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, and participating in a LGBT speakers’ bureau. Dana also consults with organizations to increase their impact by developing effective fundraising programs and improving their communications with constituents. She is a graduate of Barnard College.
Jerry Koch-Gonzalez, Interim Executive Director
I grew up in La Habana, Cuba, until our family moved in 1961 to Queens, New York City, when I was eight years old. I witnessed how differences were treated and sought to assimilate. As a young adult I experienced myself as living on the bridge of identity between middle class and working class, Latino and white, heterosexual and gay, Catholic and atheist/Buddhist. I have observed both the personal aspect of how class background affects my capacity to dream and the societal impact of wealth concentration. How can we create safe space for all? I seek to bridge connections among all people seeking greater equity. I work now as a consultant. My primary interests are promoting Compassionate/Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and dynamic self-governance (Sociocracy).
Felice Yeskel, Co-Founder and Senior Program Specialist
 Felice Yeskel, a co-founder of Class Action and United for a Fair Economy, comes from a working-class Jewish family from New York City's Lower East Side. She was a founder of the UMass Stonewall Center: A Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Educational Resource Center and served as the director for 20 years. Felice is also a founder and co-director of DiversityWorks, Inc. an organization of social justice educators that provides training and consulting on issues of diversity and multiculturalism.
She is an adjunct faculty member of the Social Justice Education Program at UMass Amherst where she has taught both undergraduates and graduate students. She has led hundreds of workshops across the country about economic inequality and about healing divisions among Americans of different class backgrounds, races, genders, and sexual orientations. She is the co-author, along with Chuck Collins, of Economic Apartheid in America, published by The New Press in fall 2000. The second edition was published in the fall of 2005. Felice has a doctorate in Organizational Development and Social Justice Education.
Click here to read about our ASSOCIATES, including Jenny Ladd, Rhonda Soto, Tanya O. Williams, Nicole Brown, Chuck Collins, Zoe Greenberg, Alan Preston and Peter Redington.
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