Current Position:
Assistant Director of Government Affairs
Year attended Midwest Academy:
What were some of your favorite memories and activities while attending Midwest Academy session or Internship?
-One of my favorite memories is working with Steve and Jackie on my strategy chart. The Midwest Academy trains the United States Student Association's GROW (Grassroots Organizing Weekend) trainers. GROW trainers go to college campuses and do a student version of the Academy's five day training. In 2003, I was "trainer trained" with about a dozen other student organizers.
We had to learn the script, role-plays and pull out the best examples from our own organizing experience. They helped us with our public speaking, butcher-paper skills and overall confidence. When we got to the strategy charts, Jackie and Steve pushed all of us to be honest about the real power relations we had worked with, what tactics had actually made the difference and what information to leave out. It left me with a better understanding of the organizing work that I had been doing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The process taught me to be a better organizer--how to look at my work and pull out key lessons or mistakes.
-Watching Salt of the Earth at my Academy session in California!
How has the training at Midwest Academy prepared you for your current position?
For the last 8 years I've been working on various legislative campaigns around education and labor, most with a complicated network of targets, allies, and power relationships. In all of my work, the lessons of the Midwest Academy have given me a language to unravel the mess and create winning strategic plans for moving forward.
Do you currently use the Midwest Academy Strategy chart in your current work?
I definitely still use the chart in my new job; I just recently joined the staff of J Street working on issues of Middle East peace. Changing jobs meant moving my focus on domestic policy to foreign policy and all the lessons of the Midwest Academy still apply. Our J Street U organizers just attended the Academy and came back singing its praises, saying how helpful the training was for sharpening their skills and for giving them a language to use with the students they are organizing with across the country.
Please tell us about your professional achievements and community involvements?
After working at the United States Student Association for 2 years, I spent the last 5 years working at American Rights at Work (ARAW). There I had the pleasure of working among a number of Midwest Academy alum including Mary Beth Maxwell, Kim Freeman, and Jane Norman. At ARAW we focused on expanding the base of people that care about the right to organize and exposing what happens to workers when they try to form a union. As I mentioned above, I just joined the legislative team at J Street, working towards Middle East peace.
Also, for the last 5 years in DC, I've volunteered with DC Jobs with Justice (
http://www.dcjwj.org/) and HIPS, (
http://www.hips.org/) a harm reduction agency that works to lower rates of AIDS in Washington DC by passing out condoms and doing syringe exchange with sex workers.
Anything you’d like to say to future Midwest Academy students?
Keep in touch with your fellow students--the lessons of the training last forever, but so do the relationships you build with fellow organizers. These personal relationships can help build organizational partnerships and movements far into the future. Every job that I've had since college has been connected to the people I met and the lessons I learned from the Midwest Academy.
Final Thoughts?
Thanks Midwest Academy for all you do to help train and develop the progressive movement! Thanks especially to Jackie, Steve, David, Paul, Heather, and the entire Academy family that has been so helpful to me in all the work I’ve done. And love to all the GROW trainers-who had the incredible opportunity to be trained by them-and to this day still have their own box of Mr. Sketch markers.
