Summarization of Organizing Experience

  • 13+ years campus and community organizing

  • Supervising and mentoring organizers

  • Mentoring students and community leaders interested in developing careers in movement work

  • Recruiting, training, mobilizing, and managing volunteers

  • Leading and overseeing all forms of direct-action

  • Leading and overseeing issue and state legislative campaigns

  • Organizing ballot initiative signature collections via door canvassing and specified locations

  • Recruiting for, editing others’, and giving/submitting written and oral testimonies at state legislative bill hearings and city council meetings

  • Producing, distributing, and converting issue messaging into traditional and social media formats with original images

  • Compiling, editing/providing feedback on, publishing, and overseeing the submission of LTE’s, OP-EDs, and blog posts

  • Forming partnerships and building coalitions with community and movement leaders

  • (Co)organizing and facilitating collaborative learning spaces to advance social justice issues

  • Representing and speaking on behalf of organizations and groups to movement partners, community leaders, public officials, legislative bodies, media sources, funders, and the public

  • Garnering donations and funding from campaign success and funder relationships

  • Fundraising via membership recruitment, door canvassing, banquets, silent auctions, social media content, and a charity shop

  • Writing and submitting grants, as well as developing budgets and tracking/reporting deliverables

  • Reviewing project submissions and awarding financial support

ORGANIZING PHILOSOPHY (abridged)

When organizing our communities we must prioritize increasing diversity at every level of leadership, employing systemic and interpersonal solutions derived from and continually evaluated by those most directly impacted, building sustainable coalitions, finding joy, and resting. Intersectional approaches are necessary to address and dismantle the intersectional oppressions and forms of dominance that keep most people excluded from the benefits of society. It is evident that movement work is more effective when community members not only understand why certain strategies and tactics are/were chosen, but get to lead strategic development, tactics, and proposed solutions. 

ORGANIZING EXPERIENCE

Mid-MO Repro (Mid-Missouri Reproductive Justice Coalition)

Cofounder/Convener - Work on and financially support local and state-based reproductive rights, health, and justice initiatives

Missouri HIV Justice Coalition

Education & Membership Chair - Worked on HIV decriminalization, most notably getting SB 53 passed which reduces penalties for HIV transmission

Feminist Consciousness-Raising Group, Columbia, MO

Cofounder and Convener - Held monthly convenings of community leaders for a topic-specific discussion led by one or more members

Missouri Organizer’s BIPOC Racial Caucus

Recruitment Director - Met regularly to focus on racial healing within and across communities

2018 St. Louis March for Black Women and Marketplace

Co-Organizer

Reproaction, remote

Senior Vice President of Research and Movement Building/Senior Movement Building and Research Manager/Movement Building and Research Manager/Senior Outreach Producer/Missouri Organizer - An education fund that used opposition research and community organizing to raise awareness on issues like abortion and birth control access/freedom, maternal and infant mortality, and drug use and pregnancy

GRO – Grass Roots Organizing, Mexico & Columbia, MO

Board Cochair/Organizer/Human Resource Enhancement Consultant - An economic justice organization that worked on campaigns like capping interest rates on short term high interest loans, raising the minimum wage, eliminating student loan debt, protecting and expanding social security and Medicaid, and gaining environmental protections

University of Missouri-Columbia  

Cofounder | MU Policy Now – a graduate and professional student group who composed and presented student policies to the Board of Curators; most notably known for leading the campaign resulting in Dr. Michael A. Middleton’s selection as Interim System President during a student uprising

Cofounder | Mizzou Social Justice Collaborative – a student group created by and composed of undergraduate and graduate student leaders tasked with creating calls to action and student demands

Cofounder | The Coalition of Graduate Workers – a multi-year graduate employee led effort that culminated into the university-recognized graduate employee union

Board Member | ABGPS – a graduate and professional student organization that most notably fundraised $2000 to purchase a community marker to commemorate the 1926 lynching of James T. Scott; 2016 recipient of the Chancellor’s Excellence Award for Most Outstanding Small Organization

Cofounder | GRO Mizzou – an undergraduate and graduate student grassroots organizing organization that most notably advocated against student luxury housing that displaced trailer park residents; Our proposal for an up to $3000 grant to each displaced family from the developers became a city ordinance