Heather Award
With a back pay settlement of $10,000 Heather Booth founded the Midwest Academy in 1973 to train organizers for the progressive movement. As Heather moved from being a trainer at the Academy to a series of critical social change organizations and campaigns she always made room for developing new organizers.Cathy Duvall, Sierra Club and Heather McGhee, Demos
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Cathy Duvall is currently the National Political & Public Advocacy Director of the Sierra Club where she oversees the Club’s direct electoral activities and voter education campaigns. She comes to this position after more than 20 years of environmental and political organizing at the local, state, national and international levels. She spent the first decade living in a dozen states and working as a grassroots organizer to pass local and state policy initiatives. She spent the second decade immersed in partisan politics, working to elect dozens of Members of Congress, U.S. Presidents and as a key consultant to now President Viktor Yushchenko during the “Orange Revolution” in 2003-2004. She joined the staff of the Sierra Club at the end of 2005. During her tenure, Cathy has led the organization in its most extensive and victorious political programs, expanding the work at both the national and state levels. She is a recognized leader in the DC progressive political community and was recently named “one of the top 100 most influential people in Washington DC” by Washington Life Magazine. She sits on numerous national boards including Working America Education Fund, Voices for Progress, and the Blue Green Alliance Education Fund.
Heather McGhee, DEMOSHer writing and research on debt, financial services regulation, retirement and inequality have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the Detroit Free-Press and CNN. She is the co-author of a chapter on retirement insecurity in the book Inequality Matters: The Growing Economic Divide in America and its Poisonous Consequences (New Press, 2005).
Trainings
The Midwest Academy advances movements for progressive social change by teaching strategic, rigorous, results-oriented approach to social action and organization building. The Academy provides training (introductory and advanced) and consulting, equipping organizers, leaders, and their organizations to think and act strategically to win justice for all.



