Board and Staff

Swati was a 2015-2016 DPSF Grantee and has been active in movement work in both North Carolina and the Bay Area for over 10 years. In addition to her work with DPSF, she serves as the Co-Coordinator of the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action and on the Advisory Board for People’s Climate Innovation Center’s Young Climate Leaders of Color. You can contact/learn more about Swati at her personal website. She lives in Berkeley, CA.

Megan is a professor at the University of Washington, where she teaches courses on abolition geographies, environmental justice and Latinx migrations. She is a core member of Liberation Media Northwest in support of prisoner-led advocacy in Washington state.

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As a cultural worker and organizer for LGBTQ rights and economic and racial justice in Louisville, KY, Carol joined the staff of DPSF in 2008. She was a founding member of the Carl Braden Memorial Center board and a co-founder of Louisville of Showing Up for Racial Justice.

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Laura was a 1999-2000 DPSF grantee while an undergraduate student building student labor solidarity on campus and with student-worker activists across the country. She spent more than 15 years working to build a stronger labor movement with Jobs with Justice and the Committee of Interns and Residents/CIR SEIU.

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Matt was a 2011-2012 DPSF grantee and has been active in movements for transformation for almost two decades. He is a founder of Visionary Organizing Lab and has worked closely with the James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership for many years. He lives in Washington DC.

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Karen was a 2013-14 and 2014-15 DPSF grantee as an organizer fighting for justice for and with Filipino domestic workers of Damayan Migrant Workers Association and Ugnayan’s Filipinx immigrant youth in New York City. She has been involved in movement work for almost two decades, engaged in projects devoted to transnational anti-imperialist solidarities, disability justice, and women of color, queer and trans survival. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectionality Studies at Connecticut College. 

Manuela is an organizer and fundraiser. Mobilizing people across class and race to transfer resources to Black, Indigenous and people of color-led movements has been her focus in professional and grassroots organizing spaces for over seven years. Currently, she is the Donor Engagement Director at New Economy Coalition, a network of organizations representing the solidarity economy movement in the U.S. Manuela is a Colombian-Italian immigrant and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Ben joined the board in 2021, continuing a family tradition into a 3rd generation. As a tradesperson and a musician, he has seen firsthand how capitalist hierarchy uses power and control to keep people struggling. He is dedicated to dismantling systems of oppression in all forms through the grantees we support at DPSF.

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Mia Henry is the founder and CEO of Freedom Lifted, a company that supports social justice leadership development using online learning, training, and coaching. Mia has also served in several leadership roles for organizations committed to justice and equity including as the Executive Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College and as the founding director of the Chicago Freedom School.

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Cedric is Professor of Black Studies and Political Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has authored The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics, and edited The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism and the Remaking of New Orleans. He is a member of UIC United Faculty Local 6456. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Center for Work and Democracy, Arizona State University.

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Nathalie was a 2007/08 and 2015/16 Davis Putter Scholarship grantee, completing a B.A. in Latin American Studies and a J.D. from Southwestern Law School.  She was born and raised in Los Angeles to Salvadoran and Mexican immigrants, and has been committed to championing the rights of workers, artists, immigrants’ rights, and combating state-sanctioned police brutality for over 20 years. She currently serves as an employment law and civil rights attorney, a member of the Los Angeles County Bar Association’s Labor and  Employment Law Section, the National Lawyers Guild’s Workers’ Rights Committee, the California Employment Lawyers Association, and the Mexican American Bar Association.

Amanda is a queer Filipino lawyer, organizer, and artist based in Queens, New York. She was a 2017-2018 DPSF grantee at CUNY City College and 2021-2022 DPSF grantee at CUNY Law. Guided by the principles and practices of people's lawyers, law is only of her tools in fighting the oppression and exploitation of vulnerable and marginalized communities. As a founding organizer of Anakbayan Manhattan, Amanda fights for national democracy in the Philippines and the rights and welfare of Filipinos abroad. As Volunteer Program Director of Mission to End Modern Slavery, Amanda utilizes her legal and organizing knowledge to empower, educate, and serve migrant workers and trafficking survivors. In her rare spare time, Amanda is a visual-artist and poet, channeling the spirit and practice of revolutionary artists in the Philippines.

Walter is Norton Putter’s son, one of the first supporters of the Fund, and the longest serving current board member. He “came of age” as an activist in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements. In addition to his work with DPSF, he is the Board Vice President of the ArtRage Gallery, solely dedicated to showcasing art related to issues of social justice.

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Rachel is a retired History professor who lives in Carbondale Illinois and has been active in the IEA/NEA local at Southern Illinois University for many years. She is the granddaughter of Marian (Nanie) and Horace (Hockey) Davis - learn more about them on Our History page.

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PG is a facilitator, trainer, coach and consultant from Detroit who was a 2017/18 DPSF Grantee. PG’s work includes: Program Manager of The BlackOUT Collective; the training team with Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD); the facilitation cohort of Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute; the Trainers Circle with Training for Change; Co-Founder & Advisory Board member of Black Bottom Archives; the Advisory Council for AfroFuture Youth; and the Council for The James & Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. 

Lenina  is the Network Strategies Senior Manager at the Center for Story-based Strategy, a movement-based organization that supports and trains grassroots groups in developing narratives and transformative stories that create opportunities for social and political transformation. She has worked with many organizations developing and implementing fundraising and narrative communications strategies including Global Action Project, Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative, Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition  ALIGN and Right to the City Alliance.  She has also worked in producing shows including ones seen on: Democracy Now!, the History channel, and American Experience.  Through her work at Center for Story Based Strategy, Lenina develops curriculum and trains narrative practitioners across the country to work with organizations to improve how they tell their organizational stories and the stories of the communities they serve. She has also taught Latino studies and Media and Public relations courses at Hunter, the New School, and Brooklyn College and the Shape of Cities to Come Institute. Her poems and essays are published in various anthologies.