Board of Directors

Heather Booth, Board President
Heather Booth has been organizing for social justice for more than 40 years.  She founded Midwest Academy, which has trained thousands of social change organizers since 1973. She was the training director for the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration.  She was the founding director of the NAACP National Voter Fund in 2000, which helped to increase African American turnout by nearly 2 million votes.  She has been a consultant to a variety of social change groups including the Center for Community Change (advising on the development of the Community Voting Project), MoveOn, the Campaign for Comprehensive Immigration Reform, Campaign for America's Future and NOW.

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

Alicia Ybarra, Member (SEIU)
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, Member (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, Member (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, Member (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, Executive Director (Midwest Academy)
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, Kendall has 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, the fourth edition is scheduled to be released in Dec. 2009.

* Organizations are listed for identification purposes only