Staff

Across the country, the Center’s staff reflects our belief that great leadership potential exists in the communities we seek to serve.

We are from red states and blue; we are both youthful and seasoned; and we represent the rich diversity of America’s immigrants, recent and from decades past, as well as its native population. Together, we work with vigor and vision to end poverty and exclusion in America.

Organizing Team Electoral Team Executive Office Public Policy Team Communications Team Institutional Advancement Team Operations Team

Organizing Team

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Electoral Team

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  • Grecia Lima

    Grecia Lima

    Political Director

    Quote

    “Baila, baila Zarite por que esclavo es libre…mientras baila. Yo eh bailado siempre.” – La Isla Bajo el Mar, Isabel Allende Translation: “Dance, dance Zarite because slave that dances is free…while dancing.. I have always danced.” – The Island under the Sea, Isabel Allende

  • Erika Grohoski Peralta

    Erika Grohoski Peralta

    Electoral Organizer

  • Mike Griffin

    Mike Griffin

    Electoral Organizer

    Quote

    “We declare our right on this Earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this Earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.” – Malcolm X, 1965

  • Gilbert Nuñez

    Gilbert Nuñez

    Electoral Data Manager

    Quote

    “The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women’s movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights.” –Dolores Huerta

  • Kristee Paschall

    Kristee Paschall

    Director of Strategic Initiatives

  • Imaa Nicco-Annan

    Imaa Nicco-Annan

    Project Coordinator, Electoral & Compliance

  • Franco Caliz-Aguilar

    Franco Caliz-Aguilar

    Senior Political Advisor

Executive Office

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  • Dorian Warren

    Dorian Warren

    President

    Quote

    “It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” – James Baldwin Read Dorian full biography here.

  • Seth Borgos

    Seth Borgos

    Director of Research and Program Development

    Quote

    “Without contraries there is no progress.” – William Blake

  • Susan Wefald

    Susan Wefald

    Director of Field Support

    Quote

    we have chosen each other
    and the edge of each other’s battles
    the war is the same
    if we lose
    someday women’s blood will congeal
    upon a dead planet
    if we win
    there is no telling.
     
    Audre Lorde
  • Lilia Cherchari

    Lilia Cherchari

    Executive Coordinator

    Quote

    “A government or a party gets the people it deserves, and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.” – Frantz Fanon

  • Emily Fischer

    Emily Fischer

    Senior Project Manager

    Quote

    “The cords of bigotry and prejudice here can be cut with the same blade. We have to keep that blade sharp and share it with one another.” –Malcolm X

  • Kyle Grassi

    Kyle Grassi

    Senior Project Manager

    Quote

    “Ignorance allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” – James Baldwin

  • Mary Lassen

    Mary Lassen

    Managing Director

    Quote

    “Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.” – Albert Einstein

  • Deepak Pateriya

    Deepak Pateriya

    Chief of Staff

    Quote

    “Only people with hope will struggle. If people are in trouble, if people are suffering and exploited and want to get out from under the heel of oppression, if they have hope that it can be done, if they can see a path that leads to a solution, a path that makes sense to them and is consistent with their beliefs and their experience, then they’ll move. But it must be a path that they’ve started clearing. They’ve got to know the direction in which they are going and have a general idea of the kind of society they’d like to have.” – Myles Horton (from The Long Haul)

  • Lorella Praeli

    Lorella Praeli

    Vice President

    Lorella Praeli is a freedom fighter, movement builder, and adaptive athlete.

    She is the President of Community Change Action and Vice President of Community Change. Lorella is passionate about building collective power to win transformative policy change at all levels of government, so that people can thrive. Most recently, she was the ACLU’s Deputy National Political Director, where she fought to defend and expand the rights of immigrants and refugees. Prior to joining the ACLU, Lorella mobilized the Latinx vote as Hillary Clinton’s National Latino Vote Director.

    Lorella moved from Peru to Connecticut with her family at the age of ten. Her life was transformed after coming out as “undocumented and unafraid” and organizing undocumented students to step into their power in Connecticut. She then served as United We Dream’s Director of Advocacy and Policy, where she led the campaign to implement DACA and was part of the team that persuaded the Obama administration to protect four million undocumented Americans through DAPA.

    Lorella is a proud Latina who believes that we will win.

    Quote

    “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” – Angela Davis

  • Trish Tchume

    Trish Tchume

    Director of Leadership Development

    Quote

    “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” – Angela Davis

  • Chirag Mehta

    Chirag Mehta

    Director of Governing Agenda and Ideas Generation

    Quote

    “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell

  • Derek Johnson

    Derek Johnson

    Executive Coordinator

    Quote

    “Black people were not allowed in the park, and so it filled our dreams.”

    -Toni Morrison

  • Carmen Orozco-Acosta

    Carmen Orozco-Acosta

    Senior Advisor to the President

    Quote

    “Whenever you start – give it your best.  The opportunities are there to be anything you want to be.  But wanting to be someone isn’t enough; dreaming about it isn’t enough; thinking about it isn’t enough.  You’ve got to study for it, work for it, fight for it, with all your heart and soul, because nobody is going to hand it to you.” – Colin Powell

  • Sylvia Ruiz

    Sylvia Ruiz

    Senior Advisor to the President

  • Michelle Liu

    Michelle Liu

    Executive Coordinator

  • Tottionna Matthews

    Tottionna Matthews

    Executive Coordinator

Public Policy Team

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Communications Team

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  • Marisol Bello

    Marisol Bello

    Director of Communications

    Quote

    “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela

  • Jasmine Nazarett

    Jasmine Nazarett

    Senior Communications Manager

    Quote

    “We must use our lives to make the world a better place to live, not just to acquire things. That is what we are put on the earth for.” -Dolores Huerta

  • Jeff Parcher

    Jeff Parcher

    Director of Public Affairs

    Quote

    “It is not enough to understand, or to see clearly. The future will be shaped in the arena of human activity, by those willing to commit their minds and their bodies to the task.” – Robert Kennedy

  • Cristina Rayas

    Cristina Rayas

    Content Creator

    Quote

    “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.
    The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.” – Wendell Berry
  • Dallas Diaz

    Dallas Diaz

    Senior Digital Organizing Manager

    Quote

    “All that you touch
    You Change.

    All that you Change
    Changes you.

    The only lasting truth
    is Change.

    God
    is Change.”
    ― Octavia E. Butler

  • Ingrid Zelaya-Ascencio

    Ingrid Zelaya-Ascencio

    Digital Campaigns Specialist

  • Tarah Walsh

    Tarah Walsh

    Director of Digital Strategy

    Quote

    “Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words and never stops at all.” — Emily Dickinson

Institutional Advancement Team

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Operations Team

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  • Ryan Young

    Ryan Young

    Chief of Operations and Organizational Sustainability

  • Julia Foster

    Julia Foster

    Director of People and Planning

    Quote

    “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,/Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” – Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

  • Stefan Perazich

    Stefan Perazich

    Project Manager: Contracts & Compliance

  • Trevor Bass

    Trevor Bass

    Senior Accounting Manager

    Quote

    “If there is no struggle there is no progress” – Frederick Douglass

  • Marcia Glasgow

    Marcia Glasgow

    Facilities & Administrative Services Manager

    Quote

    “I’m grateful for being here, for being able to think, for being able to see, for being able to taste, for appreciating love – for knowing that it exists in a world so rife with vulgarity, with brutality and violence, and yet love exists. I’m grateful to know that it exists.” ― Maya Angelou

  • Amber Hobbs

    Amber Hobbs

    Senior Technology Manager

    Quote

    “You are the somewhere you are trying to get to.” – Mooji

  • Darnetta Hollis

    Darnetta Hollis

    Operations Coordinator

    Quote

    “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.” ― Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom

  • Kathy Mor

    Kathy Mor

    Senior Events Manager

    Quote

    The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.” – Jane Addams

  • Irma Rivera

    Irma Rivera

    Director of Campaign Compliance & Risk Management

  • Clement Sinclair

    Clement Sinclair

    Administrative & Technology Support Specialist

    Quote

    “Without commitment you will never start and without consistency you will never finish.” – Denzel Washington

  • Nader Ghorban Zadeh

    Nader Ghorban Zadeh

    Talent Coordinator

  • Carlos Vahos

    Carlos Vahos

    Budget Manager

  • KJ Johnson

    KJ Johnson

    Director of Campaign Advancement and Organizational Sustainability

    Quote

    Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. ― Robert F. Kennedy

  • Nebil Abdusettar

    Nebil Abdusettar

    Human Resources Assistant

  • Kim Huckabone

    Kim Huckabone

    Director of Human Resources

    Quote

    People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou

  • Margaret Ringler

    Margaret Ringler

    Campaign Advancement Coordinator

    Quote

    “The future is not some place we are going, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made. And the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination.” – John Schaar