MMMC 2011 Organizing Team

Making Money Make Change is put together by an organizing team of staff and volunteers, all of whom have attended MMMC in the past. The 2011 team is made up of director Sarah Schwartz Sax, staff member Jessie Spector, along with seven members and four advisors. Meet the awesome 2011 organizing team, (presented, of course, in alphabetical order):

Basha Smolen grew up in the suburbs of Boston, and has lived in Brooklyn since graduating from college in upstate New York in 2009. Most of her social justice work thus far has focused on food sovereignty and agriculture, and autonomous feminist organizing. Basha got her start as a an educator in 2010, teaching gardening and horticulture education to elementary and high school students at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, and now teaches pre school in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. She is also also a founding member of The Nothing feminist collective. Basha came to this organizing committee by way of her incredible experience attending last year's MMMC. When not working on these various projects, she is crafting, cooking, and dreaming of moving west.

Erica Dobney lives in Oakland, California, where she works as Creative Director of Thrive Social Justice Consulting. Before joining Thrive, Erica worked with youth for over 10 years, organizing teachers around issues of race, class and gender in public education.  She is grateful to have found community in Resource Generation with other young people with wealth dedicated to leveraging our resources to move towards systemic change.  Erica’s love for social justice can only be matched by her love of dance, cheesy young adult novels, and all things glittery.

Heather Davis, a native Texan, lives in Philadelphia with her partner and pit bull, Rocky, where she is starting a new career in nursing. She has been involved in the RG community for over 5 years, as part of the MMMC organizing team in 2007 and 2008, and as a pod leader in 2009. She enjoys good food, and is passionate about equitable education and accessible healthy food. Heather is so excited about shaping mmmc 2011! It was a place that transformed her sense of possibilities for herself the first time she went, and keeps providing her with role models for how to be a wealthy person aligning one's resources with a path towards justice.

Ilyssa Thaler recently moved from Oakland, California to Portland, Maine where she works as a gardener and dreams of starting a sauerkraut 'factory' sometime in the near future. As a person who does not currently have direct access to wealth, but will inherit wealth in the future, Ilyssa contributes time to support those who leverage their wealth for social change. These days, you can usually find Ilyssa hangingout with plants, accidentally obsessing over cats or making shrinky-dinks.

Jessie Spector has been working at Resource Generation since graduating from Wesleyan University in 2008. Over the past few years Jessie had played a variety of roles at RG, from office management to helping coordinate the 2010 Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy retreat. Jessie also organized over 30 RG members to participate in the RG delegation to the 2010 US Social Forum in Detroit, MI. Jessie is a member of the Criminal Justice Initiative, a circle of donors and activists that collectively fund the transformation of the criminal justice system in the US, and is an active donor to a variety of communities and organizations working for economic, gender, racial, immigrant, and other kinds social justice. Jessie is constantly re-inspired by the power of organizing her own community to leverage wealth and privilege. You can often find Jessie buried in a New York Times crossword puzzle, taking long bike rides in Massachusetts, perusing the farmer’s market, or trying to stay awake late enough to go out dancing.

Katherine Orr lives in Brooklyn, having grown up across the river in Manhattan. She has experience working in politics, nonprofits and as a consultant. This is her 3rd MMMC. Her latest passions include cooking, running, and growing vegetables on her roof. She always has pencils on hand for the NY Times crossword puzzle, and claims to have once finished a Friday puzzle on her own.

Sarah Chiddy is a writer, educator, early morning walker, and co-creator of murder mystery parties. She lives in Toronto, Canada, where she works for a mentoring agency, teaches herself the autoharp, and is exploring how to leverage her class privilege in her work with a local group of prison abolitionists. She is an active donor for a number of other Toronto-based and international groups that devote themselves to creating powerful pockets of justice in innovative and engaged ways. Sarah's family comes from South Africa.

Sarah Schwartz Sax lives in the Durham, NC with roots in Western Massachusetts and Southeastern Michigan.  She comes to stewarding "more than enough money" by way of her partner's access to wealth, and is particularly interested in the joys and challenges that come up in cross-class relationships.  Sarah has worked as a social justice practitioner since her youth, involved in work connected to The Names Memorial AIDS Quilt, the deep and loamy world of sustainable and urban agriculture, solidarity with Cuba and Latin America, and reproductive justice.  She developed a background in event planning and community responses to economic inequality through her work at the Institute for Policy Studies Program on Inequality and the Common Good.  Sarah is also a yoga teacher, a massage therapist, and a collaborator in the field of transformational justice.  When not working, she knits, cooks, dances, and plays the ukulele.

Julie Pennington recently moved back to her Piney Woods home in Deep East Texas,where she is reconnecting with her blood family and exploring the role of legal advocacyin social justice movements. Her work has supported community living and resourcesharing, queer youth organizing, and personal transformation as a strategy for systemicchange. Julie is a big fan of snail mail, fishing with her dad, and the RG & MMMCcommunities.

2011 MMMC Organizing Team Advisors

Ginger Hintz (Plenaries Advisor) recently relocated to sunny Oakland, California, from rainy Seattle, Washington where she was a Program Assistant for the Gates Foundation. She has just started working at the Women Donors Network as a Program Associate. Ginger grewup in a constantly moving, working class family on the prairies of South Dakota, which shaped her wanderlust, desires for urban adventures, and obsession with perspective. Through her experiences at the Gates Foundation and her work as a Family Philanthropy Fellow at Resource Generation, Ginger has sharpened her skills in critical social justice analysis and advocacy for authentic cross-class partnerships. When Ginger isn’t commuting across the Bay, she’s probably reading, writing, hanging out with her partner, or playing with her overweight asthmatic kitty, Trotsky.

Kenny Bailey (Workshops Advisor) started his activism in the early eighties as a teenager, working in his neighborhood for tenants’ rights and decent housing, targeting the St. Louis Housing Authority. He went on to work for COOL, a national campus-based student organizing program, and then moved to Boston where he worked for the Ten Point Coalition, Interaction Institute for Social Change, and Third Sector New England, as well as being on the Board for Resource Generation.Most recently he has been a trainer and a consultant, primarily on issues of organizational development and community building. He first realized the need for a more “designerly” approach to community work while developing parts of the Boston Community Building Curriculum for The Boston Foundation. This workshop asked community activists and residents to think about creative ways to work with their community assets – existing social relationships, individual’s gifts and skills, and untapped local resources. Many community residents remained locked in conventional nonprofit approaches to working with community assets. They weren’t obliged to, they just knew no other way. He realized then that activists needed new tools to redesign approaches for community change, which led him to build a design studio for social activism.

Shaun (Sha) Grogan- Brown (Workshops Advisor) has worked to strengthen movements for social justice as an organizer, fundraiser, artist, trainer and consultant since the late 90s. He worked with Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, (CISPES), from 2001-2008 as a fundraiser, program organizer, and Development Director.  From October 2009 through June 2010, Sha served as the Grassroots Fundraising Coordinator for the US Social Forum 2010.  He is currently the Grassroots Fundraising Coordinator with Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.  Sha has a virtual toolbox of skills that he likes to put to use in all of his work, including graphic design, Spanish-English translation and interpretation, and technology support.  In his free time, Sha creates and sells original artwork through Sha’s Community Supported T-shirts.

Uma Rao (Plenaries Advisor) is an organizer for the Pride Foundation and has been passionate about anti-violence and social justice movements for 13 years, holding various roles in these movements. Her passions have been fed by her many mentors and peers, as well as her family and South Asian community. She currently serves on the board of directors for theNorthwest Immigrant Rights Project and the Western States Center, and is on the advisory board for Thrive Social Justice Consulting. Uma believes that stronger movements include grassroots philanthropy, community based strategies and leadership development. Aside from working for change, some of her most favorite things include hot cups of chai, great stories and dancing to loud music in the mornings.