Our Team
Aaron Tanaka
he/him
Aaron is a Boston-based community organizer, economic development practitioner, philanthropic advisor, and impact investor. As the Director of CED, Aaron stewards funding and capacity building programs to social movement collaboratives that advance alternatives to capitalist economics in the US. Previously, Aaron served as the startup manager for the Boston Impact Initiative, Boston's first place-based impact fund investing in Boston’s working class communities of color. Until 2012, Aaron was co-founder and executive director of the Boston Workers Alliance, a grassroots organization nationally regarded for its statewide Ban the Box policy victory in 2010.
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Aaron is a former fellow with BALLE, Echoing Green, Green For All, and Tufts Department of Urban Planning, and serves on the boards of the Foundation for Civic Leadership, Neighborhood Funders Group and the New Economy Coalition. He is a graduate of Harvard College.
Amethyst Carey
she/her
Amethyst is a Boston based co-op advocate, organizer and solidarity economy practitioner. As a Program Associate for the Center for Economic Democracy, Amethyst coordinates the Massachusetts Worker Ownership Table, a multi-stakeholder racial and economic justice initiative advancing policies, financing and technical assistance to grow employee ownership across the state. Before joining CED, Amethyst served as an Associate and Consultant for Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative's nationally recognized Community Land Trust, Dudley Neighbors Inc., where she supported resident and community engagement.
Amethyst is a Board Member for CoFED, a national nonprofit supporting young Queer and Trans people of color in the practice of cooperative economics and values through food and land, and is the Board President for Boston Community Cooperatives, a network of housing co-ops in Dorchester. She is an avid community gardener, music lover, and is passionate about envisioning new futures for the poor and working class Black communities that raised her. Amethyst is a graduate of Oberlin College.
Ariel Brooks
she/her
Ariel is an educator and organization builder. She loves messy problem solving, strategic thinking and DIY hacking whether she is upcycling cashmere baby clothes, or helping grow an organization through the bootstrapping phase. As the Managing Director for CED, Ariel partners in stewarding strategy, operations and culture for CED, and is the lead program manager for the Solidarity Economy Initiative, and the organization’s training and technical assistance work.
Prior to her time at CED, Ariel worked in social justice education, at the intersection of nonprofits and higher education, and supported local economic development work as a volunteer in Somerville, MA and Southeastern Vermont. Ariel practices solidarity economy in daily life through cooperative community gardening, collective child care, and experiments like “a year of no shopping.”
Libbie Cohn
she/her
Libbie is the Manager of Communications and Development at the Center for Economic Democracy where she makes media and helps develop narratives that center community-controlled economies. As a founding volunteer with the Boston Ujima Project, Libbie helped develop and document the Ujima Fund's participatory planning process. She has previously worked as a documentary filmmaker in China, a research assistant focused on environmental planning and a paralegal supporting Chinese immigrants with housing and immigration issues.​
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Raised in Hong Kong and the U.S., Libbie holds a Regenerative Ecological Design Certificate from Ecosa Institute in Prescott, AZ, and a Master in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She enjoys making music, watching movies, and studying history.
Martin Familia
he/him
Martin is the Director of Finance and Human Resources at the Center for Economic Democracy. He has been working in finances in different capacities since graduating from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2009. Originally born in the Dominican Republic, Martin came to Boston at the age of two where he has resided ever since. Martin demonstrates a commitment to community with his involvement at different organizations including his former school Codman Academy Charter Public School where he is an active member of Codman Academy's Board of Trustees. Martin also holds financial literacy seminars for different groups of high school students, including current students as they prepare for life after high school. After beginning his career in commercial banking, Martin was the Director of Finance and Administration at the College for Social Innovation, a startup where he played a major part in building systems around financial administration, compliance, internal controls, and human resources.
Maria Christina Blanco
she/her
María Christina Blanco is a Bolivian-American mother, organizer, and health worker who has engaged in human rights and social/economic justice activism over the past 20+ years in the Boston area. As CED's Administrative and Finance Coordinator, she provides administrative capacity to CED and its projects, in English and Spanish. She was a community organizer at City Life/Vida Urbana from 2011-2016, helping hundreds of her neighbors resist displacement due to predatory lending and evictions for the profit of corporate landlords. For over a decade prior to entering the organizing field, she did maternal-child community health work. María Christina studied public health as an adult learner at UMass Boston. Her history of involvement in cooperatives dates back to her first job, stocking groceries at the Harvest Co-op. She serves on the Governing Board of the Boston Community Leadership Academy high school, and advised their Immigrant Youth Leaders chapter during a successful 2018 student deportation-defense campaign.
Our Board
Elena Letona
she/her
Elena brings more than 20 years of working with grassroots organizations, her experience ranging from organizational development and public policy to fundraising, finances and developing grassroots boards. She is currently the executive director of Neighbor to Neighbor, a grassroots membership organization building power in working class communities of color across Massachusetts. Before joining Neighbor to Neighbor, Elena served as Executive Director of Centro Presente, a Boston-based immigrant rights organization. Her leadership transformed Centro Presente from a direct service organization to a stable member-led immigrant rights force.
Elena holds a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts. She is the author and co-author of numerous articles and reports on a variety of topics related to organizational and community capacity building.
Kalila Barnett
she/her
Kalila is a Climate Resilience Program Officer at the Barr Foundation. Kalila has over a decade of experience in community organizing around affordable housing, land development, and environmental justice. She served as the Executive Director at Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) for eight years. Before joining ACE in 2009, she worked as a Senior Organizer at Community Labor United.
Kalila has a Bachelor's degree from Bates College, where she studied American Studies and Spanish, and a Master of Public Policy from the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning School at Tufts University. Kalila currently lives in Roslindale and enjoys walking in the Arboretum, listening to podcasts, and cooking for friends.
Penn Loh
he/him
Penn is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Public Policy Program and Community Practice at Tufts University’s Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning. From 1996 to 2009, he served in various roles, including Executive Director at Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE), a Roxbury-based environmental justice group. Before joining ACE, he was Research Associate at the Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment, and Security in Oakland, California and a Research Analyst at the Tellus Institute for Resource and Environmental Strategies in Boston.
He holds an M.S. in environmental science and policy from Energy and Resources Group of the University of California at Berkeley and a B.S. in electrical engineering from MIT. He has published broadly on environmental and social justice issues and is currently a trustee of the Hyams Foundation.
Our Fellows
Francisco Perez is a solidarity economy activist and has worked as an economic development professional with frontline communities in Senegal, Sierra Leone, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Francisco is currently a PhD student in economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Executive Director of the Center for Popular Economics. His research focuses on international political economy. He holds a BA from Harvard College and an MPA from Princeton University.
Francisco Perez
he/him
Gopal Dayaneni
he/him
Gopal has been involved in fighting for social, economic, environmental and racial justice through organizing & campaigning, teaching, writing, speaking and direct action since the late 1980’s. Gopal currently serves on the Planning Committee of Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project, which brings a strategic understanding of ecological crisis and transition to racial and economic justice organizing. Gopal is also a trainer with the The Ruckus Society and serves on the boards of The Center for Story-based Strategy, The Working World, ETCgroup.org (The Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Corporate Concentration), and Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. He is on the advisory board of the Catalyst Project and Adjunct Faculty for the Masters in Urban Sustainability program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, where he teaches Ecological Systems Thinking.
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Gopal was an elementary and early childhood educator, working formerly as a teacher and as the co-director of the Tenderloin Childcare Center, a community based childcare center supporting children and families forced into homelessness. He has worked in teacher education and education organizing in the US and in India. Most importantly, Gopal is the father of Ila Sophia and Kavi Samaka Orion. He lives in Oakland in an intentional, multi-generational community of nine adults, eight children and a bunch of chickens.
Jessica Norwood is founder of the Runway Project. She is also the executive director of the Emerging ChangeMakers Network, an organization dedicated to working with inspiring leaders and innovative ideas that end economic inequality. As a leading social entrepreneur in her region, she supports strengthening social enterprise and social investing as a way to build community resiliency. Jessica previously spent years in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere as a political fundraiser and consultant, raising millions of dollars for various campaigns.
Jessica is a past member of the board of directors for the Highlander Research and Education Center, a former Emerging Leaders Fellow at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, and the Political Power Fellow with the Hip Hop Archive at the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University.
Jessica Norwood
she/her
Kali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson. Kali served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city.
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Kali also served as the Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network, the Executive Director of the Peoples' Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF) based in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina. And was a co-founder of the School of Social Justice and Community Development (SSJCD), a public school serving the academic needs of low-income African American and Latino communities in Oakland, California.
Kali Akuno
he/him
Nwamaka Agbo
she/her
Restorative Economics practitioner Nwamaka Agbo, brings a solutions-oriented approach to her project management consulting. With a background in organizing, electoral campaigns, policy and advocacy on racial, social and environmental justice issues, Nwamaka supports projects that build resilient, healthy and self-determined communities rooted in shared prosperity. In addition to her consulting practice, Nwamaka is also a Senior Fellow at the Movement Strategy Center and a 2017 Fellow for the RSF Integrated Capital Fellowship Program. Nwamaka previously served as the Director of Programs at EcoDistricts leading Target Cities—a program to support 11 neighborhood-scale sustainable urban regeneration projects across North American committed to equitable economic development.
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She currently serves as an Advisory Board Member to Oakland Rising Action and a Board Member to Thousand Currents, Center for Third World Organizing and the Schumacher Center for New Economics. She graduated from UC Davis with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and African American Studies and holds a Master’s of Public Administration specializing in Financial Management from San Francisco State University. Nwamaka lives in Oakland with her husband, where she can be found geeking out on the latest sci-fi, Afrofuturism novels or cheering for the Golden State Warriors. She likes her bourbon neat and her sake chilled.