Heather Booth

Board Chair Democracy Partners

Heather Booth is one of the country’s leading strategists and organizers for progressive issue campaigns.  She began organizing with the civil rights movement. She founded the Midwest Academy with funds she won from a back pay settlement while labor organizing.   She has directed many election campaigns and was the training director for the Democratic Party. She was the founding director of the NAACP National Voter Fund that helped increase African American voter turnout by nearly 2 million votes in 2000. She was the senior strategist for the campaign for comprehensive immigration reform. She was the director of the AFL-CIO health care campaign for the Affordable Care Act and ran the campaign for the first Obama budget. She was the director of Americans for Financial Reform, the coalition leading the fight to hold the big banks accountable that passed the Dodd/Frank bill and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  She directed the campaign for marriage equality around the Supreme Court decision.  She has worked on many other campaigns.  There is a movie about her life in organizing, “Heather Booth: Changing the World.” She is a member of Democracy Partners consulting firm.

Jacky Grimshaw

Secretary/Treasurer Center for Neighborhood Technology

Jacky joined at the Center for Neighborhood Technology ( CNT) in 1992 and created many initiatives in the areas of public participation in transportation planning, environmental justice, community development, air quality and water quality. She developed its capacity to engage in public policy advocacy, transportation research, public participation tool development, GIS mapping, community and economic development. Jacky advocated for and provided expertise to increase transit in the Chicago region. She created and led CNT’s transportation and air quality programs for over a decade. She has advocated for and provided expertise to increase transit service in the Chicago region and led CNT’s Transit Future campaign in the fight for mass transit reform in the Chicago region in 2008. Subsequently, created a new Transit Future campaign aimed at seeking the Cook County Board identify a dedicated revenue stream to expand transit in Cook County. She is also leading CNT’s initiative on creating more equitable TOD. This includes leadership in Elevated Chicago, a project funded by a national collaborative that seeks to promote racial equity, prosperity and resiliency in Chicago communities through eTOD.

Since 2005, she has led CNT’s policy efforts at all levels of government including service on the Transportation Committee of Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Transition Team. Jacky serves on numerous boards, including: National Academy of Sciences’ Transportation Research Board’s Environmental Justice and Public Involvement Committees. She has just completed terms on the Chicago Transit Authority and TRB’s Women’s Issues in Transportation Committee. Before joining CNT she was the Deputy Director and Director of the Chicago Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and Deputy Treasurer of the City of Chicago. Ms. Grimshaw has been a talk show host for public radio, a talk show regular panelist for commercial radio and a columnist for Crain’s Chicago Business newspaper.

Jitu Brown

National Director Journey for Justice Alliance

Jitu Brown, National Director of the Journey for Justice Alliance (J4J) is a long-time community organizer born on Chicago’s south side. He is a product of Chicago’s public school system and is a proud parent and husband. Jitu started volunteering for the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization (KOCO), the oldest black-led organizing community-based organization in Chicago in 1991. He eventually joined the staff as Education Organizer in 2006 and organized in the Kenwood Oakland neighborhood for over 20 years bringing parents, students, teachers and community members together to collectively participate in the education system by developing various educational initiatives and battle back against efforts to systematically disinvest in, close and privatize schools in Chicago. In his role as National Director for J4J, he leads an alliance of grassroots community, youth, and parent-led organizations in over 30 cities across the country demanding community-driven alternatives to the privatization of and dismantling of public schools systems. He has brought great energy and focus to the connection between the attacks on public education and the disempowerment of African American communities all across the country.

Robert Creamer

Founder Strategic Consulting Group

Robert Creamer has been a political organizer and strategist for over four decades. During that time he has worked with many of the country’s most significant issue campaigns. He was one of the major architects and organizers of the successful 2005 campaign to defeat the privatization of Social Security. He has been a consultant to the campaigns to end the war in Iraq, pass universal health care, hold Wall Street accountable, pass progressive budget priorities, and enact comprehensive immigration reform. He works with Americans United for Change where he helped coordinate the campaign to pass President Obama’s landmark jobs and economic recovery legislation.

During the 2008 Presidential Election he worked for the Democratic National Committee as National Coordinator of field based rapid response to Republican candidates McCain and Palin. During his career, he has worked on hundreds of electoral campaigns at the local, state and national level. Creamer began his organizing career in 1970 working with Chicago’s Citizen Action Program (CAP) which had been organized by Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation. CAP successfully campaigned to reduce the sulfur dioxide in Chicago’s air by almost two thirds.

In 1974 Creamer founded the Illinois Public Action Council – later known as Illinois Citizen Action – which became the state’s largest consumer advocacy organization and progressive political coalition. He directed the organization for 23 years. He has been a full time political consultant since 1997 when he co-founded the Strategic Consulting Group.

Judy Hertz

Executive Director Emeritus

Judy served as Director of Special Projects at the Midwest Academy from 1999- 2010 and was the Executive Director from 2011-2019. She still serves as a trainer at the five-day Organizing for Social Change workshop, the 3-day Supervising Organizers workshop, and consults with a variety of organizations, from neighborhood organizations to state and national groups.

Prior to joining the Academy, Judy worked as a community organizer in Chicago for 20 years. She began with an institution-based organization on the southwest side, and then served for ten years as executive director of Rogers Park Tenants Committee, Chicago’s largest and most powerful neighborhood-based tenants’ rights organization. During her time there, she helped lead campaign to pass the Chicago Tenants’ Bill of Rights, which dramatically transformed renters’ rights in Chicago, and helped launch the Lead Elimination Action Drive, which improved Chicago’s response to lead paint poisoning. She guided the organization through a transition into a multi-issue organization, changing its’ name to Rogers Park Community Action Network (RPCAN).

Following her work with RPCAN, Judy spent two years working on Organizing and Family Issues, conducting leadership training in a feminist organizing model with low-income Hispanic mothers. Judy was a member of the founding board of the National Organizers Alliance, a professional association for progressive community, issue, and labor organizers. She was also a founder and member of the Board of the NOA Retirement Pension Plan, a multiple employer pension plan for community organizers.

Jackie Kendall

Partner Democracy Partners

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 1981 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 human rights, faith based, women’s, disability, LGBT, senior citizen and student groups.

As Executive Director of the Midwest Academy (1982-2010), Kendall 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.

Currently she is working for Food and Water Watch/Food and Water Action as Organizing Advisor. She is also a partner at Democracy Partners.

Kendall is co-author of Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Training Manual by Kim Bobo, Jackie Kendall, and Steve Max having over 500,000 copies sold.

David Medina

COO/Co-Founder Results for America

David Medina has 30 years of national policy and political experience in Washington D.C.

David is the Co-Founder and COO of Results for America, a national, bipartisan, nonprofit organization helping more than 300 cities, states, and federal departments harness the power of evidence and data to solve our world’s greatest challenges. RFA and its coalition partners have helped shift more than $22 billion in taxpayer dollars toward results-driven, evidence-based solutions.

David previously served as First Lady Michelle Obama’s deputy chief of staff, the Democratic National Committee’s policy director, the Democratic National Convention Committee’s deputy CEO, and U.S. Senator John Edwards’ presidential campaign national political director.

David has also served as the U.S. Global Leadership Campaign’s government relations director, the Peace Corps’ public engagement director, an AFL-CIO legislative representative, and U.S. Senator Carol Moseley-Braun’s legislative assistant.

David has served on the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, Human Rights Campaign, Millennium March on Washington for LGBT Rights, and University of Chicago Visiting Committee national boards of directors. He currently serves on the AFL-CIO’s Working America and Midwest Academy national boards of directors.

David received his B.A. from the University of Chicago and his M.P.P. from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Eddy Morales

Morales Public Relations

Eddy brings more than ten years of senior leadership experience to the Democracy Alliance, most recently serving as the Deputy Director of Voto Latino, an organization founded by actor Rosario Dawson aimed at increasing Latino civic engagement. While there, he helped increase the annual operating budget and oversaw strategy and day-to-day operations.

Previously, Eddy was the Deputy Director of Leadership Development at the Center for Community Change, where he launched a leadership development program to recruit and nurture low-income community organizers of color into community based organizations.

At the DA, Eddy was the Director of the Latino Engagement Fund, a collaborative effort between individual and institutional donors designed to strengthen high-performing Latino civic engagement organizations and increase the political power of the growing Latino population. Since 2009, Eddy has been continually recognized by Washington Life Magazine as” one of the most influential people under 40 in DC” and also is a proud Midwest Academy Alum.

Jessica Pierce

Co-founder Piece by Piece Strategies

A national leader in civil rights, holding expertise in youth engagement, organizational development, and training. Jessica’s passion for organizing started at UC Santa Cruz where she was elected as Student Union Assembly President for two terms. After graduating, Jessica served as the Organizing Director for the United States Student Association (USSA) where she led campaigns in over 15 states. During her tenure USSA led efforts to pass the College Cost Reduction and Access Act – the largest increase to grant aid since the passing of the G.I. bill in 1944. With leaders of the Generational Alliance (GA), Jessica led efforts to develop Generation Vote, a coalition of 20 organizations invested in building a youth voting bloc that generated over 1 million youth contacts. Jessica then served as the National Training Director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) where she helped to coordinate national election efforts for the 2012 election to turnout over 1.2 million Black voters and build uniform capacity & training programs for the national, state, and local levels. Most recently, Jessica was the National Chair for Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) where she focused on capacity-building and sustainability efforts through civic engagement, convenings, and trainings. Outside of organizing, Jessica has committed herself to building power through training, working with organizations such as Wellstone Action, Midwest Academy, and the Center for American Progress. Jessica has been featured in national, state, and local media outlets including Ebony, PBS Newshour, BET, CNN, and Buzzfeed and has won numerous awards including the 21st Century Innovator Award from the Midwest Academy. Throughout her career and to-date, she has personally trained more than 20,000 people.

Marvin Randolph

Director Southern Elections Fund

A nationally recognized expert in voter registration, voter contact and Get Out The Vote operations, Marvin has worked on over 120 campaigns in 31 states.  Past work includes: Senior Vice President for Campaigns at the NAACP; Director of Organizing and Politics at the Center for Community Change; DNC Political Mail Consultant at the Baughman Company; Western Regional Political Director, SEIU; Southern California Field Director, AFL-CIO Labor ’98 Campaign; National Executive Director, 1994 Project Vote; and Managing Partner at Urbanomics Consulting Group. He is a long-time friend and supporter of the Midwest Academy.