2026 

Movement Leader Fellowship

At a time when communities nationwide face urgent challenges to safety, justice, and economic security, strong, strategic leadership is more important than ever. The 2026 Movement Leader Fellows are experienced organizers working across a range of issues — from immigrant rights and economic justice to labor, climate, and community empowerment. Through this fellowship, these mid-career leaders are deepening their leadership practice, sharpening their strategic thinking, and building connections with a dynamic cohort of peers. Grounded in both theory and practice, the fellowship equips fellows with the tools, frameworks, and support needed to lead strategically, navigate complex challenges, and sustain long-term movement work.

Explore the profiles below to meet the remarkable leaders driving change across our communities.

Meet the Fellows

  • Yonah Zeitz is the director of advocacy with the Katal Center for Equity, Health, and Justice. Through advocacy, communications, policy work, organizing, and coalition building, Yonah works to strengthen grassroots movements and build people power. His work focuses on transforming the criminal legal system and creating community-led solutions that focus on resources and healing, not cages.

  • Sophia is a Chicago-based labor strategist who has led numerous campaigns to build worker power. She fights for bread and roses too.

  • Francisco Diez is a Philadelphia-based organizer and economist. The son of Mexican immigrants, he dedicates himself to organizing for transformative and durable worker power with Popular Democracy, his union (the Washington-Baltimore News Guild), and as a member of DSA.

  • Sy is a GOTV trailblazer taking on the establishment and rejecting status quo politics.

  • Breanna Champion is a Chicago-based organizer, artist and care worker. As a leader committed to movement and power building, she has spent the last 10+ years connecting communities, campaigns, coalitions and issues across the city of Chicago, and nationally, towards equity and abolition. Breanna believes that creating the world we deserve is a collaborative, restorative, liberating, and imaginative project.

  • Braxton Winston II is a father, union member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), and previously served as an At-Large member and Mayor Pro Tem of Charlotte City Council until December 2023. Braxton was elected president of the North Carolina State AFL-CIO in September 2025.

  • Yudith Azareth Nieto is a co-founder of the Banchalenguas Language Justice Collective and co-founding member of Another Gulf is Possible. She is an organizer, interdisciplinary artist and language justice worker based in the Gulf South, where she has been advocating and creating story-based strategies for environmental justice communities since 2012.

  • Kaitie Dong is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Washington State Budget and Policy Center where she works with grassroot organizational partners to advance immigrant rights. Kaitie has organized immigrant youth, passed state legislation, and built a program that supports people to step into their power. She is passionate about accessibility, building community, and mentorship (including being your hype person and sounding board).

  • Since 1990, Rania Masri, co-director of the NC Environmental Justice Network, has organized for justice and against systems of oppression and wars — through protests, teach-ins, and conferences; political organizing; and writings, research, and media work. She taught holistic environmental sciences at the university level for nearly two decades. She served as an expert in the Court of Conscience, where she presented testimony on the environmental impact of the 2006 Israeli War on Lebanon, and as a juror in the 2025 Merchants of Death War Crimes Tribunal. She recognizes the intersectionality of struggles and the need to stand in solidarity, not in charity and dreams of a world in which we all strive to be Mother Trees. Dr. Rania Masri is from the artificially divided land of Greater Syria.

  • Kayla Reed is Co-founder and Executive Director of Action St. Louis, a role she has held since 2019, and a proud St. Louis native from the city’s Northside. She attended Washington University in St. Louis, where she majored in sociology and African & African-American Studies. Under her leadership, Action St. Louis builds political power for working-class communities and those historically excluded from decision-making through grassroots organizing, electoral engagement, housing justice, and rapid, community-centered response, with a people-first approach grounded in dignity, accountability, and ensuring communities closest to the challenges have real power in shaping solutions.

  • Lily Mandlin is a strategist, builder, and people developer. With a background in local government and social entrepreneurship, she has been a part of building Essie Justice Group since 2015 and serves as Deputy Director. Lily leads the development of strategy and institution building; co-authored Essie’s Because She’s Powerful report and constituency building organizing framework; and is dedicated to building the power of Essie’s base of women with incarcerated loved ones.

  • James is the Executive Director of Power U Center For Social Change, an organization committed to running campaigns that improve the lives of working class black and brown people in Miami dade county. James was activated after the tragedy of Trayvon martin while he was a student at the University of Buffalo. James is also a trainer at BOLD (Black Organizers For Leadership and Dignity).

  • Alexandria Bratton is a southern born/raised organizer and policy + program strategist from Hampton, Virginia. Her work has spanned from local to national campaigns focused on civic engagement, voting rights and making our democracy for accessible.

  • Socorro is serving as the Co-Director and Organizing Coordinator of Latinos United for a New America. They studied Ethnic Studies and Public Policy at Mills College in Oakland to understand the link between race and power structures. Born, raised, and organizing within San Jose, Socorro sees this hyperlocal work connected to global liberation as we’re all building towards societies where we’re treating the earth and each other with care.

  • Christian Perry is a Community Organizer, Leadership Strategist, Writer, and Political Operative from the South Side of Chicago. Christian serves as the Political Director for Chicago's Mayor and leads a nonprofit focused on structural change through transformational organizing. Rooted in Black Liberation Theology and informed by his leadership in successful electoral and issue-based campaigns, his work centers on building sustainable communities that are fundamentally defined by justice and belonging.

  • Jordan Bridges merges artistic expression and advocacy for social change, using community organizing and storytelling to amplify marginalized voices and challenge systemic inequities.

  • Megan is a seasoned community organizer and policy advocate working at the intersection of public safety, budget justice, and alternatives to incerceration in Los Angeles County.

  • Rev. Dr. Cassandra Gould is the National Political Director for Faith in Action Network. She is a womanist, public theologian, organizer, and strategist working at the intersection of faith, justice, and politics who equips others to do the same.

  • Andrea Ortiz is the Membership and Campaigns Director at Dignity in Schools-NY, where she organizes with NYC students, families, and educators to create safe and supportive schools. Andrea previously worked at the New York Immigration Coalition, leading campaigns advancing equity and access for newcomer immigrants and Multilingual Learners. She is passionate about ending the criminalization and detention of communities of color and bringing joy and re-energizing our communities.

  • Ira has deep experience in electoral campaigns, policy advocacy, community organizing, and coalition management. He has helped advance major wins for working people, including Oregon’s farmworker overtime law and the nation’s strongest heat and smoke protections for workers. Grounded in the values of dignity, respect, love, and joy, Ira is committed to building power alongside communities most impacted by injustice.

  • Nanci is a longtime immigrant justice organizer committed to building community power and developing grassroots leaders. Her work has spanned statewide and national campaigns, faith-based organizing, and youth leadership development. She currently serves as an Organizing Director, guiding strategy, coaching organizers, and strengthening movements for dignity and liberation.

  • Celsa Stallworth is an Immigrant Organizer building Black & Brown unity across rural Alabama.

  • For over 13 years, Jennifer Ruglio has worked in multiple roles in The DART Network to bring large numbers of people of faith together to win justice. As the Lead Organizer of BUILD, the organization brought out 2,000 people to a public meeting and won campaigns around affordable housing, school suspensions and gun violence. In 2021, Jennifer joined the DART national staff where she is responsible for organizer and leader training.

  • Fabiola is the Texas Immigrant Worker Project Coordinator at the Texas AFL-CIO and is based out of Austin, Texas. Currently, she collaborates with unions and community organizations to create programmatic and policy work at the intersection of labor and immigrant justice.

  • Alia Trindle is Director of Political Strategy with Right to the City Alliance. RTTC is a national network of 70 local and statewide base-building organizations campaigning to democratize and decommodify land and housing in the U.S. With over 20 years in racial and economic justice organizing, Alia is passionate about connecting rural and urban communities to build progressive governing power.

  • Michael Conway is a seasoned organizer who has run large scale organizing, issue advocacy, and voter persuasion campaigns in 18 states. He is currently the National Training Director at Working America, where he centers his work around developing leaders  and fighting to advance the rights of working people across the country.

  • Anna Duncan is an organizer and strategist based in Durham, NC with two decades of experience in labor, immigration, and housing movements. She is the Senior Organizing Director at the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA). She previously led the We Belong Together campaign focused on gender and immigrant justice, and got her start as an organizer fighting for affordable housing and against displacement in her hometown of Washington, DC.

  • Emma (she/her) is the North Carolina Organizing Manager for Planned Parenthood Votes! South Atlantic. She has a decade of experience with base building nonprofits, organizing students, advocating for the environment, public health, consumer rights and reproductive rights across the US. Her work oscillates between electoral cycles and state legislative sessions.