Board of Directors

  Heather Booth, President
Heather Booth is one of the country's leading strategists and organizers for progressive issue campaigns.  She began organizing with the civil rights movement. She is the founding director of Midwest Academy, a training center for organizers. She has directed many election campaigns and was the training director for the Democratic Party. She was the founding director of the NAACP National Voter Fund that helped increase African American voter turnout by nearly 2 million votes in 2000. She was the lead consultant, setting up the to the campaign for comprehensive immigration reform. She was the director of the AFL-CIO health care campaign and ran the campaign for the first Obama budget. She was the director of Americans for Financial Reform, the coalition leading the fight to hold the big banks accountable, that passed the Dodd/Frank bill. She is now the consultant to the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, that built a rapid response field operation that successfully helped to prevent the Super Committee from making cuts to those programs.

Nancy Shier, Secretary/Treasurer (One Ounce of Prevention) 

Nancy Shier has served as the Director of the Ounce of Prevention Fund’s Kids Public Education and Policy Project (Kids PEPP) since 1989. In this role, Nancy oversees the Ounce’s advocacy efforts in Illinois spanning a spectrum of issues that impact very young children’s growth and development, including education, health care, child care, mental health, child abuse prevention, welfare reform, and professional development. Nancy brings over twenty years of experience working with public officials and policy makers, as well as extensive experience building collaborations and partnerships to address issues affecting young children and low-income families in Illinois. She is the Ounce’s principal strategist in the areas of Illinois policy and governmental relations and spearheads the agency’s legislative and administrative advocacy activities.
Nancy serves on the Illinois Child Care and Development Advisory Council and the Financing Committee of the Home Visiting Task Force of the Illinois Early Learning Council. She co-chaired the Policy and Communications Committee for the Chicago Program Evaluation Project. She was instrumental in creation of the Early Childhood Block Grant and the infant-toddler set aside in Illinois’ Preschool for All program. She has also done policy work on financing a broad array of early childhood and maternal and child health programs. Prior to joining the Ounce, Nancy served as the Political Action Director for Illinois chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and as Executive Director of the Chicago Chapter of the National Organization for Women.

 Alicia Ybarra, Director
First generation Chicana activist, Alicia Ybarra grew up in Los Angeles and by the age of 14 became involved with MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán), a student group organizing Latino youth. She attended Stanford University, where she majored in political science and continued to work with MEChA. Alicia became active in the United States Student Association and became part of the staff that same year.  While at USSA she became a GROW Trainer with the Midwest Academy.  Upon, leaving USSA, Alicia was recruited by Citizen Action to open a new office in New Mexico where she served as the Program Director for a single-payer healthcare campaign.  Alicia then returned to the east coast where she became the founding Director of Hispanic PAC USA in 1994, and later went on to join the 1996 electoral political action drive of the Service Employee International Union member NY local 1199.  She has also worked with Unite For Dignity and Jobs with Justice in Miami, Florida organizing and training Latino and Haitian immigrants.  Alicia is currently working as the Training Director of SEIU International.

Cathy Hurwit, Director (Rep. Jan Schakowsky)
Cathy Hurwit currently serves as chief of staff to Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), where she also has responsibility for universal health care, senior and labor issues.  Prior to joining Rep. Schakowsky's staff in January 1999, she was a legislative affairs specialist at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).  She served as legislative director of Citizen Action, an independent consumer and environmental watchdog organization, for twelve years.  With her particular focus on health care, Ms. Hurwit was the founder of the Campaign for Health Security and served as its chair from 1991 to 1998.  She also co-chaired the health care task force of Jobs with Justice and served on its executive committee.  She provided technical assistance on single-payer and state implementation issues to President Clinton's Health Care Task Force. Ms. Hurwit served as energy policy director for Representative Toby Moffett (1976-1979), adviser to the House Government Operations Committee's Subcommittee on Environment, Energy and Natural Resources (1979-1982), and legislative director for Representative Ed Markey (1987-1989).

Paul Booth, Director (AFSCME)
Paul Booth was a leader in the 1960s at the beginning of the student movement as National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society, the largest organization of the emerging youth movement.  In 1965 he directed the first march on Washington, D.C against the War in Vietnam and issued the statement to "build not burn" and organized the first sit-in at the Chase Manhattan Bank exposing it as a "partner in Apartheid”.  He joined the labor movement in 1966 as Research Director for the United Packinghouse Workers of America and then joined the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in 1974, working to build Illinois AFSCME (Council 31) and then moving to the International as Organizing Director for 10 years and now as Executive Assistant to President Jerry McEntee.

Jacky Grimshaw, Director (Center for Neighborhood Technology)
Jacky joined the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT) in 1992 and has developed CNT's capacity to engage in public policy advocacy, transportation research, public participation tool development, GIS mapping, and community economic development.

Jacky serves on numerous boards, including: Congress for New Urbanism, Chicago Transit Authority’s Citizens Advisory Board, Renew America-Renew the Earth, Smart Growth America, Smart Growth Network, Surface Transportation Policy Project, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board’s Committees on Women’s Issues in Transportation and Environmental Justice. She was a member of the Energy and Transportation Task Force of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and has been a longtime activist for social justice.

Prior to CNT, Jacky spent time as a researcher in hematology and gastroenterology, in both state and federal government, in the Chicago Public School district and served in numerous other capacities, including political advisor for the late Mayor Harold Washington and Director of the Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, Deputy City Treasurer and talk show host for the Chicago NPR and ABC affiliates, and columnist for Crain’s Chicago Business. Jacky has completed the M.A. in Public Policy requirements at Governors State University and holds a B.S. in Biology from Marquette University in Milwaukee

Jackie Kendall,  Director                                                                                                    After winning a successful campaign to get freshness dates on food, Jackie Kendall attended the Midwest Academy and went on to help build Illinois Public Action one of the first statewide multi-issue coalitions. In 1982 she moved to the Midwest Academy where she made arming progressives with the Midwest Academy organizing fundamentals her life’s work.  She has trained thousands of organizers from a wide range of organizations: labor, civil and humam rights, faith based, women's, disability, LGBT, senior citizen and student groups.

As Executive Director of the Midwest Academy (1982-2010), Kendall steered the Midwest Academy to meet the needs of the progressive movement. In the mid 80’s she identified the need to routinely infuse the movement with new generations of skilled organizers and forged a partnership with the United States Student Association (USSA) to create the Grassroots Organizing Weekends (GROW).  In that same spirit, she expanded Midwest Academy’s reach with a paid Internship Program specifically for students and young people interested in learning direct action organizing.

With extensive experience working in electoral campaigns (both partisan and non-partisan), Kendall was part of the team that developed and delivered the first Camp Obama trainings for volunteers going to Iowa the summer of 2007 through the Iowa Caucuses.

Kendall is co-author of  “Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Training Manual”  Kim Bobo, Jackie Kendall, Steve Max.  With over 50,000 copies sold.

Judy Hertz, Executive Director                                                                                         Judy Hertz has been Director of Special Projects at the Midwest Academy since 1999 and became the Executive Director in 2011. She serves as a trainer at the five-day Organizing for Social Justice workshops, and consults with a variety of community organizations, from neighborhood organizations to state and national groups. Recent clients include the Brady Campaign against Gun Violence United with the Million Mom March, Smokefree Wisconsin, the Cincinnati Community Police Partnering Center, the Midwest Agricultural Safety and Health Conference, the Jane Addams Senior Caucus, and a variety of other organizations. Judy coordinates the Midwest Academy summer community organizing internship program for college students, and has trained and mentored nearly 200 students over the past eight years, placed with a variety of organizations in 17 states. Numerous interns have gone on to careers in community organizing, in a diverse array of groups, from Chicago neighborhood organizations to USAction affiliates, national networks such as ACORN, the IAF, and DART, and labor unions. Judy is co-developer and co-trainer for the Midwest Academy’s newest training session, Supervising Organizers.

*Organizations are listed for identification purposes only