CIWO Fellows & Partners

Ligaya Domingo is currently the Racial Justice and Education Director for SEIU Healthcare 1199NW where she has worked for over 17 years. She started as a union organizer in the AFL-CIO’s Union Summer Program in 1997, worked for SEIU International for a number of years, and after many years working as a field organizer she now leads the local’s Racial Justice program and helps to lead the union’s education, training, and development programs for members and staff. She is also Secretary and Trustee for the SEIU Healthcare 1199NW Multi-Employer Training Fund.

She has served three terms as the Seattle chapter appointee to the National Executive Board member of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance. She has also been appointed to serve on a number of a of committees and boards where she represents Seattle APALA including: MLK Labor, Washington State Labor Council, the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies Advisory Committee, and Washington State Labor Education Research Center. She is also a member of the SEIU Racial Justice Committee, Washington State Labor Council’s Racial Justice Committee, MLK Labor’s Racial Justice Taskforce where she serves as the co-chair, Seattle King County Workforce Development Council Board Member and Chair of the Equity Committee.

She has a Ph.D. and a M.A, from the Social and Cultural Studies Program in the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, Building a Movement: Filipino American Union and Community Organizing in Seattle in the 1970s, focused upon the limits and possibilities of using two parts of civil society: a union and a community organization in Seattle, Washington in the 1970s as vehicles for social change. She holds a Master’s in Teaching from Seattle University and previously worked as an elementary school teacher. She also has a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Washington.

Malcolm Shanks (they/he) has spent more than 15 years as an organizer, facilitator, and political educator. Born and raised in Washington, DC, Malcolm considers themself a product of the cultural and political organizing of Black movements in their hometown.  

Malcolm has created and led hundreds of trainings with thousands of students, workers, organizers, and artists. Their approach uses storytelling, media, and art to ground people in the why’s and how’s of oppression, exploitation, and resistance. With these methods Malcolm has developed projects as diverse as skills training on electoral campaigns, identity development workshops among college students, and participatory history projects for community activists. 

From 2016-2020 Malcolm worked at Race Forward, a national racial justice organization, as their Senior Trainer and Content Manager. They designed and led racial justice trainings and organizational coaching for groups building racial equity in their programs and workplaces. Since leaving Race Forward to pursue independent work, Malcolm has given university lectures, created multimedia social justice educational materials for global audiences, facilitated dozens more workshops and political education sessions, and continued their organizational consulting work. 

Kathleen Gaspard, Deputy Director of the Institute for Policy Studies, is a 2021 CIWO Fellow and Build the Bench Advisory Committee member.  The Institute for Policy Studies is a progressive think tank dedicated to building a more equitable, ecologically sustainable, and peaceful society. In partnership with dynamic social movements, the institute works to transformative policy ideas into action.

Kathleen has a lifetime of political experience at both the national and local level. Currently she serves as Deputy Director of IPS, a progressive organization based in Washington, D.C. Prior to that she was Chief of Staff at the Women's Bureau in the U.S. Department of Labor. Before moving to the DMV area, she worked in the Government and Community Affairs Department at Columbia University. She has a love for public service and a strong affinity towards her native New York City.

Malini Cadambi-Daniel is a Strategic Campaign Director at the Service Employees International Union. Previously, she was Research Director for 1199 United HealthcareWorkers East as well as Committee of Interns and Residents in NYC. She served as a Commissioner on New York City's Equal Employment Practices Commission, is a board member for the National Center for the Study of Collective Bargaining in Higher Education and the Professions, and served as board presidents for New Immigrant CommunityEmpowerment and P.S. 174 Parents Association. She worked as a public school teacher in Oakland, CA where she was a member of the National Education Association and the California Teachers Association and served as a representative for the Oakland Education Association. 

Norma Martinez-HoSang works for the SEIU Connecticut State Council directing the CT Bargaining for the Common Good campaign to win lasting revenue for critical community services. She brings more than 25 years of community and labor organizing experience, beginning in California, where she led electoral and community based campaigns around an array of racial and economic justice issues. In Oregon, she worked for nearly a decade with SEIU Local 503, leading Bargaining for the Common Good contract fights for higher education and state workers. More recently she served as lead organizer in the home care division for SEIU 1199NE and organizing director for Make the Road Connecticut. 

Javier Morrillo joined CIWO as a Fellow in June 2019, after stepping down from his role as president of SEIU Local 26 in Minnesota. Under Javier’s leadership, Local 26 has earned a national reputation as a creative and risk-taking force for raising standards for low wage workers, especially immigrants and people of color. Javier’s experience and perspective will be an invaluable contribution to the CIWO mission of reimagining worker organization as he contributes to the development of the Bargaining for the Common Good program.

Elizabeth Parisian has worked in the labor movement for over a decade as a strategic campaigner, researcher and communicator on a number of corporate accountability campaigns. Elizabeth is currently Assistant Director of Research and Strategic Initiatives with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), where she leads the Capital Strategies program, most recently developing campaigns to divest workers’ capital from private prisons and hedge funds. Prior to joining AFT, Elizabeth provided policy, research and communications support on a number of campaigns, including Hedge Clippers, Fight for $15 and Stand Up! Chicago, where she was Policy Director. She is also the author of a number of white papers and research reports, including “All That Glitters Is Not Gold,” an analysis of U.S. public pension funds’’ experience with hedge fund fees and returns, and the two part “Private Prisons and Investment Risks,” which exposes corporations, hedge funds and private equity firms that profit from mass incarceration. Elizabeth is based in Chicago and has a Masters in Rural Sociology from Ohio State University.

Kathleen (KB) Brower has been an integral part of CIWO's work as the key organizer and trainer for the coalition of union and community partners in the cutting-edge BCG network since its beginning.  Brower served as the national coordinator for the first ever Bargaining for the Common Good in Higher Education conference with over 50 campuses represented. She designed the overall conference agenda, staffed the national steering committee, coordinated the panels, and organized all the workshops. Currently, KB is developing a training series to be piloted at Union Theological Seminary (UTS). The series will train future clergy and chaplains in critical movement-building skills and connect them with the social and economic justice movement throughout the Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG) network.

After organizing with the janitorial staff on her college campus at William and Mary over a decade ago, Brower got her start in the labor movement with SEIU 1199 New England where she was part of a successful campaign to win collective bargaining rights for over 6000 home care workers in Connecticut. After some time at 1199, Brower became the Domestic Campaigns Director for United Students Against Sweatshops, where she organized students to run campaigns in solidarity with campus workers on over 100 college campuses. After her two-year term with USAS ended, she began work with AFSCME 3299, where she ran new organizing campaigns for contracted out custodians and worked with a broad coalition of students and community members to fight for a Community Benefits Agreement as the university expanded. Brower most recently moved back to her hometown of Philadelphia to organize where her mom is a member of the Teamsters and her grandmother was a member of the ILGWU. She worked for two years for the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals, running new organizing campaigns and contract fights with nurses across the state. Brower has consulted with a number of national and local unions, including the American Federation of Government Employees, with whom she leads trainings on organizing, worksite mapping and structure, bargaining for the common good, and working effectively with community partners.

Adriana Paz Ramirez is a labor rights organizer, popular educator and intersectional feminist based in Mexico. Originally from Bolivia she is the regional coordinator for Latin America for the International Domestic Workers Federation, the 1st global federation founded and led by grassroots women from the Global South representing almost 600,000 domestic workers around the world. Prior to that she was senior organizer for the Workers Action Center in Toronto, Canada where she organized with low wage (im)migrant workers. She also served as gender, equity, and empowerment officers in the Solidarity Center Mexico office where she organized with maquila workers in the Mexico-US border. She also managed the International Development certificate program at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and co-founded the Justicia for Migrant Farm Workers, a grassroots national collective in Canada advocating for the labor and citizenship rights of farm workers under the Canada’s guest worker program.

Felicia Griffin, Deputy Director of Partnership for Working Families, works on Build the Bench initatives. At the Partnership, Felicia is responsible for strengthening and expanding the network's membership, supporting the leadership development of network staff and affiliates, developing emerging programs, campaigns and strategies that ensure that our local campaigns and organizing add up to building state power. Prior to joining the Partnership, Felicia was the Executive Director of the Colorado affiliate, United for a New Economy. Since 2002, Felicia has worked with labor and community partners on many campaigns, including increasing Colorado’s state minimum wage, increasing Medicaid enrollment for 80,000 children in New Mexico, passing statewide wage theft protection legislation in Colorado and increasing local funding for affordable housing ($150 million) in Denver, Colorado. She has a deep commitment to racial justice, and all the work she does has a goal of reducing disparities for low-income workers and communities of color. Felicia lives in San Antonio, Texas and enjoys spending her free time traveling with her husband and five children (three girls and two boys).

Maria Elva Maldonado has worked in support of CIWO's Build the Bench program since 2015. She previously served as the Senior Development Associate and Director of Housing at CASA de Maryland from 2000 to 2013 and worked in legal and educational areas with labor unions both in California and throughout the US with the Teamsters Union. Maria Elva received her JD at Georgetown University Law Center and her BA from University of Texas in Austin.  

Rin has joined CIWO to develop a training series piloted at Union Theological Seminary (UTS). The series will train future clergy and chaplains in critical movement-building skills and connect them with the social and economic justice movement throughout the Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG) network. 

Originally from Atlanta, GA, Rin is currently a Master of Divinity Candidate at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Her experience in ministry, nonprofit work, and coordinating support for low-income community members led her to pursue Chaplaincy within the cross-sections of pastoral care and movement building. Rin loves writing, yoga, and storytelling, all of which she hopes to bring into their work as an organizer and spiritual caregiver.

Margarita Hernandez has joined CIWO as a Fellow for Bargaining for the Common Good (BCG). She is working with Sandra Lane, BCG Education Director, to build a train-the-trainer curriculum to expand on-the-ground local union campaign work.

Margarita Hernandez is the Labor Director at the Grassroots Power Project. Margarita has more than 20 years of experience leading successful legislative, electoral and organizing campaigns at the national and state level and creating leadership development pipeline and training programs for labor and community organizations and its members.

Most recently, she was the States Campaign Director at the Strategic Victory Fund where she worked with state donor tables and communications hubs in key battleground states to ensure strategic investments in state partners that are leading pro-democracy campaigns and organizing to increase voter turnout.

Previously, she was the National Legislative-Political Mobilization & Training Coordinator at the Communications Workers of America, a union of 700,000 members. She directed the union’s national legislative and political field mobilization, managed a team of 20 state member-organizers to drive the states’ legislative and political campaigns, including the union’s PAC, and built and drove the union’s political education program.

She co-founded the New Jersey Working Families Alliance and its c3 partner, the Grassroots Institute of New Jersey, where she led the state budget coalition, a diverse coalition of community, labor, environmental, and faith groups that helped win a tax increase on the wealthiest New Jerseyans under Governor Corzine.

In addition, Margarita led comprehensive leadership development and training program for social justice organizations in New York and Florida at the Social Justice Leadership, and ran Latino outreach for Planned Parenthood of New York City’s comprehensive sex education in public schools campaign. Margarita started her organizing career at the New York Working Families Party electing the first city council member on a third party line and helping elect one of the first progressive District Attorneys as part of challenging the state’s draconian and punitive drug laws.

Margarita was born in San Salvador, El Salvador, grew up in New York, and lives with her husband and two children in Minneapolis, Minnesota.