Windcall Institute Board

Common Counsel Foundation is the fiscal sponsor of Windcall. However, the Windcall Board functions in every other way as the governing body of Windcall.

Elsa Barboza • SCOPE/AGENDA • Los Angeles, CA

Alexa Bradley • On the Commons • New York, NY

Dothula Baron • Consultant • Warsaw, NC

Margi Clarke • Consultant to grassroots organizations • Berkeley, CA

Rev. Mac Legerton (Treasurer) • Center for Community Action • Lumberton, NC

Myrna Martinez Nateras • American Friends Service Committee • Fresno, CA

Donna Parson • Demos • New York, NY

Amisha Patel • Grassroots Collaborative • Chicago, IL

Deepak Pateriya (Co-Chair) • United Food and Commercial Workers • Oakland, CA

Joy Persall • Bush Leadership Fellow • Minneapolis, MN

Melinda Wiggins • Student Action with Farmworkers • Durham, NC

Cathy Woodson • Virginia Organizing Project • Richmond, VA

Elsa Barboza

Elsa Barboza has spent the last fifteen years fighting for social justice through the building of a grassroots South Los Angeles organization, AGENDA and a community institution SCOPE, a social justice organization focused on alleviating poverty in low-income and working class communities of color.  She has led grassroots regional jobs campaigns resulting in the creation of Healthcare training that links low-income communities to good-paying healthcare careers and welfare mothers to model training & placement for public sector jobs.  At the heart of her work, she helped to organize & develop a Black and Latino membership base in South Los Angeles and in other inner-city neighborhoods.  She is currently the Campaign Director working with ally organizations, and helping to train grassroots community leaders and staff on strategy, tactics and political analysis.  Elsa has tremendous organizing experience and over the years has served as a South LA organizer, the Echo Park Community Organizer, the Welfare Campaign Lead Organizer and the Organizing Coordinator positions at SCOPE.  Elsa also has electoral organizing experience that began in 1992 when she did neighborhood organizing, civic participation and electoral education with Los Angeles Jobs With Peace.  Elsa has activism training from the CTWO MAAP Program, CTWO Mentorship Program and as a student of color at the University Of Michigan. She was a Windcall Resident in 2006.

Dothula Baron

Dothula Baron-Hall has worked in communities for over thirty years to empower individuals and families, socially, economically and environmentally. Her primary focus has been on working with families to improve the quality of their lives and thus develop tools for overcoming life’s constant challenges. In 2002, Dothula founded the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH) in Duplin County. Since its founding, the agency’s work has expanded to address environmental problems in Duplin, Bladen and Sampson counties. In 2005, REACH was awarded an EPA Environmental Justice Small Grant, and in 2007, a Collaborative Problem Solving Grant to address public health concerns connected to waste disposal from industrial hog operations. A native of Winston-Salem, NC, Dothula has a B.A.degree from North Carolina Central University in Durham, an M.S. from the University of Maryland College Park, and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution from Columbia College in South Carolina. She was a Windcall Resident in 2001.

Alexa Bradley

Alexa Bradley is a Program Director at On The Commons. As part of the organization’s leadership team she works to support community solutions rooted in the commons principles of collective stewardship and equitable use of our resources.

Alexa Bradley has worked as an organizer, facilitator, trainer and popular educator for over 25 years, with a particular focus on linking community organizing to broader social movement strategies. Previously she worked as a senior partner at the Grassroots Policy Project providing tools and training to build the resilience, vision and power of community change organizations throughout the US. She was Co-Director of the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action, a groundbreaking labor-community coalition. She is also the recipient of a Bush Leadership Fellowship to research participatory processes and other transformational tools in organizing and leadership development. Her current work includes a focus on the Great Lakes Commons Initiative, an effort that links the goals of ecological stewardship, social equity and deepened democracy.

Alexa just moved to Brooklyn, NY with her partner where she intends to enjoy exploring the city, yoga, performance and gardening.

Margi Clarke

Margi Clarke's work history includes 25 years as an organizer and fundraiser for Central American solidarity and human rights, women's development, immigrant rights and environmental justice.  Margi is bilingual Spanish-English and has traveled widely in Latin America.  For the last 8 years, she has worked as an independent consultant to grassroots community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She is a mother, yoga practitioner, neighborhood activist and cancer survivor.  She was a Windcall Resident in 2004

Rev. Mac Legerton

Mac Legerton is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center For Community Action (CCA) in Robeson County, N.C. where he has worked for the last 29 years. Garnered with the mission to improve the quality and equality of life in the most ethnically diverse, rural county in the United States, Mac has led and partnered in highly successful, social justice and sustainable development projects and developed one of the oldest community and regional based, multiracial social justice organizations in North Carolina and the South.  In recognition of his model work in rural development and social justice, Legerton received the 2007 Distinguished Service to Rural Life Award from the Rural Sociological Society. He is a practicing contemplative and ordained minister in the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ. He is a member and leader in the national Guild for Spiritual Guidance. Mac has an MA in Education and Theological Studies from Union Theological Seminary in New York and completed coursework in the EdD Program at Columbia University, Teachers College. Legerton also directs CCA’s new Institute on Sustainable Development, Social Justice, and Transformative Learning that includes residential programs for undergraduate and graduate students from across the nation and assistance with undergraduate and graduate projects in these areas. He serves on numerous committees and boards on the local, state, and national level, including the Windcall Institute. He was a Windcall Resident in 1990.

Myrna Martinez Nateras

Myrna Martinez Nateras is the Program Director for the Human Migration and Mobility Central Valley Programs of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). In 1998 Myrna joined AFSC to found their Pan Valley Institute (PVI) a new center with the goal of assisting immigrant becoming active players in empowering their communities. She grew PVI from a one-person operation working from her home, to a real institute with a physical space in Fresno, California and a staff of three, along with a core committee of volunteers from all walks of life. Myrna’s greatest achievement, through PVI, has been to empower Central Valley’s immigrant community to begin to address their place in society on their own terms. Myrna has worked with a number of groups from many different ethnic communities to help them discover their own gifts and talents which they can share with the wider community. Myrna has been actively involved in several international UNESCO conferences for the advancement of policies on democracy and civic engagement programs for migrants. Myrna was born in Tuxpan Michoacán, Mexico, she graduated in Philosophy and Sociology from the University of Bucharest, Rumania.

Donna Parson

Donna Parson is Senior Project Manager at Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action.  Donna coordinates staff activities, meetings and projects initiated by the President's office, and directs the Demos Forum: Ideas for Change events program.  She has over 25 years experience building grassroots advocacy organizations.  Donna was formerly the Director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group and Northeast Action and the Field Director of Public Campaign.  She has also worked in the political arena directing several Congressional campaigns.  She first became involved in advocacy work when she was a young mother in rural Connecticut and she organized her neighbors to stop an environmentally destructive highway.  She went on to work for the Sierra Club and, eventually, for the Connecticut Citizen Action Group.  She was a Windcall Resident in 2002.

Amisha Patel

Amisha Patel is the Executive Director of the Grassroots Collaborative, a community-labor coalition fighting for economic and racial justice in Chicago and Illinois. Previously, Amisha organized with SEIU Local 73 for almost six years, organizing hospital employees and head start workers. She also worked to build community-labor partnerships against privatization, school closings and under-resourced parks on the South and West Sides of Chicago. Amisha also worked in the Bay Area with youth of color around violence against women prevention for four years, primarily developing arts-based programming that included a youth-led, Asian Emmy award-winning documentary. She organized youth of color against a toxic waste facility in East Palo Alto, which young people succeeded in shutting down ten years later. She sustains herself through writing, painting, and helping to build spaces for diverse constituencies to listen to each other and achieve liberatation from the impacts of oppression.

Deepak Pateriya

Deepak Pateriya is Organizing Coordinator for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Prior to joining the UFCW, Deepak was on the international staff of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), as part of the union’s Capital Stewardship team. In this role, Deepak worked with SEIU members, leaders and staff to ensure that members’ pension funds promote responsible corporate practices by the companies they’re invested in, including when workers at those companies are organizing to form a union. Previously, Deepak did organizing and political work for SEIU Local 1877, the union for janitors and other property services workers across California. From 1995 to 2003, Deepak was on staff at AGENDA/SCOPE; during those years, he worked as an organizer, a lead organizer, an electoral campaigner, and also as director of AGENDA/SCOPE’s training program that provided political education and strategic capacity building programs to grassroots organizations around the country. Deepak’s first full-time paid organizing job was on the national staff of the U.S. Student Association from 1991 to 1994. He was a Windcall Resident in 2002.

Joy Persall

Joy Persall is currently an Archabld Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow. Previously, she was the Executive Director of Native Americans in Philanthropy, which serves Native communities, Native leaders, nonprofits and the organized field of philanthropy and is the only organization whose primary purpose is to advocate on behalf of Native people in the philanthropic sector.  Previously the Associate Director of The Headwaters Foundation for Justice, she brings leadership experience in innovative community based grant-making and capacity building programs. Joy was instrumental in the expansion of Fund of the Sacred Circle, and chaired a $2 million endowment campaign for the fund that supports Native American social justice projects in Minnesota and Wisconsin. In addition, she directed the Capacity Building program at Headwaters that provided technical assistance resources for grassroots organizations, and served as a bridge between the grassroots and philanthropic communities.

Joy is a graduate of the Emerging Philanthropic Leaders Fellowship of the National Council of Foundations, served on the Board of Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action, The Funding Exchange, National Network of Grantmakers, Changemakers, Third Millennium Philanthropy & Leadership Initiative of The Center on Philanthropy, and Indiana University’s Board of Visitors.  Persall currently serves the Board of the Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, Heartland Democracy, Wellstone Action and WindCall Institute.

Joy is Ontario Aniishinabe - French Canadian, mother, grandmother, and has committed her work and life to raising awareness of issues of diversity and inclusion and working for justice and equity. She was a Windcall Resident in 2001.

Melinda Wiggins

Melinda Wiggins is the Executive Director of Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF), a nonprofit organization that brings students and farmworkers together to learn about each other's lives, share resources and skills, improve conditions for farmworkers, and build diverse coalitions working for social change. Before starting as the director of SAF in 1996, Melinda coordinated SAF's Into the Fields summer internship program for several years. She got involved with the farmworker movement as a SAF intern with the Episcopal Farmworker Ministry during the summer of 1993. Melinda is active with many immigrant and farmworker rights coalitions, including the Adelante Education Coalition, Farmworker Advocacy Network, and Farmworker Ministry Committee, as well as many social justice groups such as Zomppa and the Windcall Residency Program. Melinda is the granddaughter of sharecroppers who grew up in a rural farming community in the Mississippi Delta. She moved to North Carolina in 1992 to pursue a Masters of Theological Studies at Duke University.

Cathy Woodson

Advisory Board

Stuart Acuff • 1999 • AFL-CIO, Organizing Director • Washington, DC
Carl Anthony • 1992 • Breakthrough Communities • Oakland, CA
Fran Barrett • 1997 • Atlantic Philanthropies • New York, NY
Maria Blanco • 1996 • Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity • Berkeley, CA
Linda Burnham • 1992 • Non-profit consultant • Oakland, CA
Pamela Chiang • 2000 • Center for Community Change • Belgrade, MT
Walter Davis • 1998 • National Organizers Alliance • Maryville, TN
Scott Douglas • 2001 • Greater Birmingham Ministries • Birmingham, AL
Emily Goldfarb • 1994 • Nonprofit consultant • San Francisco, CA
LeeAnn Hall • 1997 • Alliance for Just Society • Seattle, WA
Taj James • 2001 • Movement Strategy Center • Oakland, CA
Madeline Janis-Aparicio • 1997 • LA Alliance for a New Economy • Los Angeles, CA
Sandra Jerabek • 1994 • Redwood Economic Development Institute • Crescent City, CA
Anthony Van Jones • 2000 • Center for American Progress • Washington, DC
Burt Lauderdale • 2000 • Kentuckians for the Commonwealth • London, KY
David Mann • 1997 • Nonprofit consultant • Minneapolis, MN
Rev. David Ostendorf • 1991 • Center for New Community • Ellsworth, WI
Millard Mitty Owens • 1997 • New York University, New York, NY
Julie Quiroz-Martinez • 1994 • Movement Strategy Center • Oakland, CA
Rosi Reyes • 2001 • Nonprofit consultant • San Francisco, CA
Janet Robideau • 2001 • Montana People's Action • Missoula, MT
Andy Robinson • 2005 • Nonprofit Consultant • Plainfield, VT
Gary Sandusky • 1990 • Center for Community Change • Boise, ID
Rinku Sen • 2000 • Applied Research Center • New York, NY
Jim Sessions • 1999 • former director, Highlander Center & the Union Community Fund • Knoxville, TN
Nina Shapiro-Perl • 2004 • Documentary filmmaker, Filmmaker in Residence, American University • Silver Springs, MD
Esmeralda Simmons • 2000 • Center for Law & Social Justice • Brooklyn, NY
Arturo Vargas • 1992 • National Association of Latino Elected Officials • Los Angeles, CA
Carol Prejean Zippert • 1992 • Society of Folk Arts & Culture • Eutaw, AL