Board of Directors
Sam Grant is founder and CEO of Ujima Creations Consulting, which works with grassroots community organizations across the United States - supporting their efforts to build capacity, develop and strengthen their leadership base, and develop new approaches to organizing and development.
Sam is also the Special Projects Director for Full Circle Community Institute, which brings diverse communities, institutions and networks together to address common problems and opportunities. FCCI uses appreciative inquiry and participatory action research to build capacity of cross-cultural and cross-class networks and coalitions to promote more equitable outcomes. FCCI is currently working on racial disparities in welfare to work outcomes and developing a leadership base of current and former welfare recipients.
Sam is also faculty at Metropolitan State University, where he teaches Ethnic Studies, Political Science and Community Psychology courses.
He has recently designed a new initiative - the Grassroots Public Policy Institute to help people from socially and economically marginalized communities develop and refine their policy development and policy change capacities. He has been on the UFE Board since 2003.
Peter Hardie (President) is the principal of Wayfinding Organizational Consulting, incorporating principles of community and discovery into the dynamics of organization, social justice and social impact. Having served as an executive for TransAfrica Forum, an international advocacy organization, and as a consultant to the Ford Foundation, he is passionate about the need for global perspective and understanding in social change and organizational growth. He serves as president of the Board of United for a Fair Economy, an organization dedicated to reversing racial and economic inequality in the United States.
A graduate of Harvard University, a labor and community activist upon leaving college, Peter has worked on local and national electoral campaigns in field and leadership positions, most notably as campaign manager for the first Latino elected to the Massachusetts state legislature. He helped shape many grassroots community initiatives around peace and justice, violence against women, police conduct, youth involvement and public schools. As union representative for SEIU, he organized, negotiated, and managed public employee contracts in Massachusetts. He spent many years teaching in the public high schools, and worked with activists on public school reform efforts. He served as executive director for Roxbury Youthworks, a successful community-based program in Boston for youth involved in the juvenile justice system.
Consulting clients have included the Ford and W.K. Kellogg Foundations, Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, Third Sector New England, United for a Fair Economy, United Way of New York City, and a variety of community and advocacy groups. He is currently affiliated with Management Assistance Group and Interaction Institute for Social Change.
Alanna Hartzok is state coordinator for the Pennsylvania Fair Tax Coalition in Scotland, PA. She is also Co-Director of Earth Rights Institute, a civil society organization working for economic justice and peaceful resolution of conflicts. She is a United Nations NGO Representative for an international organization based in London. Her 2001 E.F. Schumacher Lecture was published as Democracy, Earth Rights and the Next Economy. That same year she was a candidate for Congress in the Ninth District of Pennsylvania.
In 1993 she initiated tax reform legislation and worked with state Senator Terry Punt and his staff to guide it through Pennsylvania legislative hearings to nearly unanimous passage of Senate Bill 211, signed by Governor Thomas Ridge as Act 108 in November of 1998.
Her published articles on tax reform are used by legislators in the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey and New York. Ms. Hartzok is currently working with a team of colleagues on innovative public finance policy initiatives in Philadelphia and Nigeria.
Prakash Laufer is a board member and treasurer of United for a Fair Economy.
Prakash is the former CEO of Motherwear International - a catalog and web company dedicated to the support of breastfeeding and nurturing parenting. Together with his wife Jody Wright they grew Motherwear Inc from 1987 to 2003 and to sales of $11 Million and created the niche of clothing for Breastfeeding Mothers. Jody and Prakash have 5 daughters and are a global family with 5 sets of birth parents - from Africa, the Philippines, Haiti and the US. He is especially interested in how businesses can incorporate socially responsible practices into every area of their activity - from environmentally friendly practices, employee involvement and ownership practices, to creating products and services that are sustainable and healthy for consumers and communities.
For the past 30 years Prakash has been a student of meditation and yoga and of PROUT (the Progressive Utilization Theory) - a spiritually based alternative to capitalism. In the 80s Prakash and Jody published the Prout Journal - integrating spirituality and progressive ideas - in Wisconsin and New England.
Prakash loves to dance - and this has been the focus of his formal education. He began dancing at Dartmouth College in 1970 - attended graduate school in Dance at UCLA (dropping out to become a travelling meditation teacher/organizer) - before completing his masters degree in Dance-Movement therapy from Antioch New England. Over the years he has explored authentic movement, contact improvisation and is currently performing with a dance company that spans multiple generations. He is the organizer of a monthly film series - Another World is Possible - together with the Earthdance Community in Western Massachusetts. He is also the organizer of the annual Earthdance Film Festival - Dance and Music Can Change the World. His passion is the expression of spirituality and service and activism through dance and the arts.
Thea Mei Lee is Policy Director at the AFL-CIO, where she oversees research and strategies on domestic and international economic policy. Previously, she worked as an international trade economist at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. and as an editor at Dollars & Sense magazine in Boston. She received a Bachelors degree from Smith College and a Masters degree in economics from the University of Michigan.
Ms. Lee is co-author of A Field Guide to the Global Economy, published by the New Press. Her research projects include reports on the North American Free Trade Agreement, on the impact of international trade on U.S. wage inequality, and on the domestic steel and textile industries.
She has been named one of Washington’s top grassroots lobbyists by The Hill newspaper and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows, including the Lehrer News Hour; CNN; Good Morning America; NPR’s All Things Considered and Marketplace; and the PBS documentary, Commanding Heights. She has testified before several committees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate on various topics. She serves on several advisory committees, including the State Department Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy and the Export-Import Bank Advisory Committee. She is also on the Board of Directors of the Worker Rights Consortium, United for a Fair Economy, and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Robin Leeds is a senior political strategist, organizer and advocate with more than 30 years of work in the government, political, private and non-profit sectors. Her experience is unusually broad, from rank and file workplace organizing to spearheading major initiatives from the Clinton White House, giving her the capacity to work with people from all sectors of society and a wide range of constituencies. Ms. Leeds’ expertise encompasses women’s leadership development and “gender intelligent” strategic communications, public policy advocacy, political and non-profit fundraising, donor advising and philanthropy, campaigns and elections, government affairs, civic engagement, and corporate citizenship.
Ms. Leeds manages Winning Strategies, a public affairs and political consulting firm in Washington DC. Winning Strategies has represented a range of organizations from the Inter-American Commission on Women at the Organization of American States to the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. Recently, she was a Scholar in Residence at the Women in Politics Institute at American University and an academic advisor to the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform. Currently, she is a Senior Advisor to the Harvard Women’s Leadership Board, a Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Senior Advisor on Women for the Obama for President Campaign.
Ann Lennon has been the Program Director of the American Friends Service Committee's Orita initiative in Winston-Salem, NC since 1995. Before that, she was an Executive Committee member for the Southeastern Region of AFSC.
Ms. Lennon oversees and offers technical and developmental assistance with special program initiatives. The Know Your Rights Program helps Latino and low resource African American communities learn about their legal rights. The PUEBLOS program focus on the educational needs of low resource youth.
The Crossroads and Women's Literacy and Leadership Programs identify emerging leaders among low resource communities through skill building and by giving them access and opportunities to apply for grants, and resource sharing.
Mike Miller is the director of the Project on Inequality and Poverty at the Commonwealth Institute and a research professor of sociology at Boston College. He is on the board of directors of the Poverty and Race Research Action Council; the Scientific Board of the Comparative Research Program on Poverty of UNESCO; and the Advisory Board of the Fourth World Movement. He also served on the Executive Committee of the Field Foundation and has been a Guggenheim Fellow. Mr. Miller was an advisor to Martin Luther King, Jr. and George Wiley and to the national poverty programs of Ireland and the United Kingdom. He is the co-author of forthcoming book on Race, Gender and Class Respect; and author, co-author, editor of more than a dozen books and 300 articles.
Jacqui Patterson began her professional career as a special educator with the US Peace Corps (PC) in Jamaica. Upon completion of PC she attained Master's degrees in Social Work from the University of Maryland, and then a Master's in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University. While in the School of Social Work she joined a group of peers in spearheading the rebirth of an association for black social work students and became active in the National Association of Black Social Workers.
At the conclusion of her formal schooling, Jacqui joined the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, as an Outreach Program Associate working on children's health issues. This position stoked her interest in how economic issues affect the social status and outcomes of certain populations and she became active in United for a Fair Economy. After spending several years as a UFE trainer, in 2004 Jacqui was elected to the Board of Directors.
In 2001 Jacqui re-entered international development by joining Interchurch Medical Assistance where she has spent the past 4 years working on HIV/AIDS Programs with the most recent post being that of Assistant Vice President of Programs - HIV/AIDS. Work with I.M.A. has provided much opportunity for growth and establishment of relationships including extensive partnerships with Christian Health Associations throughout Africa, and, in the last 3 years, has resulted in two representational/guiding positions as a member of the Steering Committee for the Pan African Christian AIDS Network as well as Board of Directors for Christian Connections in International Health. Jacqui now serves as Senior Women's Rights Policy Analyst with ActionAid International USA.
Vijay Prashad is Professor of International Studies at Trinity College, CT. He is the author of ten books, two of which have been chosen by the Village Voice as books of the year (Karma of Brown Folk, 2000 and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity, 2001). His most recent books are Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare (2003) and Darker Nations: the Rise and Fall of the Third World (2006). He is also on the board of the Center for Third World Organizing and of the National Priorities Project, as well as being the co-founder of the Forum of Indian Leftists. His writing can be read regularly in Frontline (India), ZNET, and Counterpunch.
Bárbara J. Robles joined the College of Public Programs at Arizona State University as an Associate Professor in August 2005. She currently sits on the Board of Economic Advisors for the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. She is the author of Women in the U.S.: An Economic Profile and Latina Microenterprises and the U.S.-Mexico Border Economy, and is a co-author of The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide (New Press, 2006). Formerly, she was a Revenue Estimator/Economist for the Joint Committee on Taxation scoring tax legislation for the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.
She is currently engaged in a five-year survey data collection effort with Southwest border community based agencies on Financial Behaviors and Needs for low-resource working families. To date, 11,500 surveys have been collected over a two-year period. Her research focuses on linking the Earned Income Tax Credit to Latino consumer asset building, Southwest Border family financial education, minority small and micro-businesses, and Latino entrepreneurship.
Robles teaches graduate courses in Latino Family Financial Fitness and Community Asset Building Policies and Community-University Collaborative Leadership at Arizona State University. Bárbara is a research fellow at the Filene Research Institute, the research arm for the Credit Union National Association.
Makani Themba-Nixon is Executive Director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance health equity and justice. Current projects include Policy Advocacy on Tobacco and Health (PATH)—a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Initiative to build tobacco control policy advocacy in communities of color; as well as numerous tools and resources that help people translate local problems into progressive, effective policy initiatives.
Makani was previously director of the Transnational Racial Justice Initiative (TRJI), an international project to build capacity among advocates to more effectively address structural racism and leverage tools and best practices from around the world. While at TRJI, she co-authored and edited a "shadow report" on institutional racism.
Prior to that she directed the Grass Roots Innovative Policy Program (GRIPP) a national project to build capacity among local organizing groups to more effectively engage in media and policy advocacy to address institutional racism in welfare and public education. She was a staffer for the California State Legislature, served as media director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference/Los Angeles, and worked five years for the Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol and Other Drug Problems, including three years as director of its Center for Media and Policy Analysis.
Makani has published numerous articles and case studies on race, media, policy advocacy and public health. She is co-author of Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention, a contributor to the volumes We the Media, State of the Race: Creating Our 21st Century, along with many other edited book projects.
Her latest book is Making Policy, Making Change, which examines media and policy advocacy for public health through case studies and practical information.