Bianca Cunningham | Campaigns Director

Bianca Cunningham is a former Verizon Wireless worker who led her coworkers in 7 stores across Brooklyn, NY to join CWA in 2014, making them the first unionized retail workers in the company. She later led her coworkers on a 49 day strike to secure their first contract. Verizon fired her for organizing, and during the Verizon strike, picketers across the country chanted “Bring Back Bianca!” Bianca was on the bargaining team to help secure their first contract for stores in Brooklyn as well as a store in Massachusetts.
Bianca co founded the DSA’s AfroSocialists and Socialists of Color caucus, a caucus for Black Indigenous and people of color within the organization. She also served as co-chair of the NYC chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America for two terms. She most recently was on staff at Labor Notes where she sometimes wrote and more often facilitated training on Race and Labor.

bianca[at]acrecampaigns.org

Sandra Jeong Lane | Education Director

Sandra Jeong Lane (she/her) has organized with workers to build power across the East and West coast for over a decade. At the healthcare union HPAE, Sandra worked with union members in Pennsylvania and New Jersey to run contract campaigns and fight for legislation that put patients over profits. In the face of anti-union attacks including the “Janus” decision, Sandra worked with SEIU 32BJ to develop communications strategy with airport workers, cleaners, and security guards to grow union membership. Sandra also organized with CWA to develop a political activist program to influence key elections across Pennsylvania. Before joining BCG, she ran AFSCME education programs throughout the Pacific Northwest to build power for organizing, bargaining, and racial justice campaigns. Sandra is from the California Bay Area and studied Politics and Feminist Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She completed her Masters in Labor Studies at the University of Massachusetts.

sandra.lane[at]rutgers.edu

Stephen Lerner | Senior Fellow

Stephen Lerner is a labor and community organizer and architect of the groundbreaking Justice for Janitors campaign. Over the past three decades Lerner has organized hundreds of thousands of janitors, farm workers, garment workers, and other low-wage workers into unions, resulting in increased wages, first-time health benefits, paid sick days, and other improvements on the job. A leading critic of Wall Street bankers and the increased financialization of the U.S. economy, Lerner argues the growing power and influence of the finance industry has led to record income inequality and served as the primary driving force behind the creation of overwhelming debt obligations seen at the state and local level. He advocates for the use of non-violent civil disobedience as a tactic to challenge the influence of Wall Street and corporations. Lerner is a frequent contributor on national television and radio programs and has published numerous articles charting a path for a 21st century labor movement focused on growth and meeting the challenges of a global economy.

Sara Myklebust | Research Director

Sara Myklebust is the Research Director at KI focused on Bargaining for the Common Good. Previously, she worked for the Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers (BAC) as their Deputy Director for Research and Education and as a Senior Lead Researcher at the Center for Strategic Research (CSR) in the Organizing Department of the AFL CIO. Sara is originally from Tucson, Arizona and has worked with the Ironworkers as a strategic researcher organizing immigrant rebar workers across the Southwest. Sara worked as a community organizer and policy analyst at FRESC, now UNE, around the commuter and light rail expansion and development impacts. She has experience in legislative campaigns, advocacy work and community organizing, and extensive knowledge of municipal planning and procurement processes. She earned a Master’s Degree in Public Affairs from the University of Texas at Austin, where she focused on immigration policy. She loves backpacking with her partner Noah and discovering new recipes to cook at home.

sara.myklebust[at]georgetown.edu

Alexis Harper | Communications and Events

Alexis Harper is the director of communications and events at The Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University.  She joined KI through the WILL Empower Apprenticeship program in 2022. Alexis Harper is a student, community organizer and freelance writer located in the DC area. Alexis is finishing her dissertation in African American literature at Howard University where she focuses on racialization, nationalism and geographies in contemporary Black speculative fiction. In addition to her work with KI, Alexis organizes mutual aid in DC’s Ward 1 neighborhoods through various grassroots organizations. She is a graduate of Fisk University (B.A. ’13) and Virginia Tech (M.A. ’16). Alexis is from Southern California.

ah1802[at]georgetown.edu

Gabriella D. Noa Betancourt

Based at: Action Center on Race and The Economy

Location: Miami, Florida

Gabriela is a Senior Research Analyst at the Action Center on Race and the Economy. She immigrated to Miami from Cuba at the age of 6, where she has developed a deep commitment to build solidarity among black and brown folks in the South to take on corporate greed. Through BCG, she works with local partners to provide research support and train cohorts of members on strategic research and corporate power mapping. At ACRE, her work is centered on building campaign models to champion progressive revenue solutions that make the ultra-wealthy pay what they owe so that, after decades of racialized disinvestment, our communities can have robust and fully-funded public services. Prior to her role at ACRE, she spent 6 years as a Research Analyst with UNITE HERE Local 355, where she helped build worker power in South Florida through research, community coalition building, and member-led electoral campaigns. In her free time, she enjoys making pottery and longboarding near the beach.

Rebekah Gorbeah

Based at: Tennessee 4 All

Location: Memphis, Tennessee

Rebekah has been living in Memphis for six years now and in that time she gained experience in being an event planner and electoral organizer in local elections. She believes that politically Tennessee is in an incredibly defensive position and that the New Confederacy –  made up of greedy corporate interests and white supremacist organizations – needs to be taken down in order to build power for all Tennesseans not just the 1 percent of Tennesseans. She sees her work in rural organizing as a contributor to that larger vision. She is originally from Pembroke Pines Florida and loves to play piano, read and try new things. 

Norma Martinez Hosang

Based at: Recovery for All Connecticut

Location: Connecticut

Norma Martinez-HoSang has been a labor and community organizer for over 20 years in California, Oregon and Connecticut.  She has organized and bargained in public sector unions with membership in higher education, health care and other Public State Services.  As a community organizer she has led campaigns on issues affecting  immigrants, youth and other communities that have been left behind.  She is the Organizing Director at Recovery for All in Connecticut.  RFA is a statewide coalition of labor, community, and faith organizations representing hundreds of thousands of people—Black, Brown, and white – demanding dramatic investment in the programs and services that many Connecticut residents desperately need.  She is a CIWO fellow and believes that the only way to win the kind of structural change we need is by uniting labor and community members in building people power to win and developing Common Good Campaigns.

Arielle Klagsbrun

Based at: Action Center on Race and The Economy

Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Arielle works with the Philly Revenue Project to help support campaigns to win progressive revenue in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania. Arielle has nearly a decade of organizing experience around racial justice, climate justice and corporate accountability. She has worked predominately with basebuilding organizations in the Center for Popular Democracy-network, both in St. Louis and Philadelphia. Most recently, Arielle managed the campaign of Councilmember Kendra Brooks, the first Working Families Party councilmember in Philadelphia history, and previously led the Our City Our Schools’ campaign to end the 16-year state control of Philadelphia’s schools. She loves to eat, perfect laminated dough recipes and plan actions to disrupt the lives of billionaires.

Bahar Tolou

Based at: Action Center on Race and The Economy

Bahar has more than 15 years experience working on campaigns to organize low-wage workers at Service Employees International Union (SEIU) on Justice for Janitors and Stand for Security campaigns, as well as working with labor / community coalition on revenue and budget, housing, and education justice campaigns. She has led teams to analyze budgets, tax systems, and municipal finance deals that have led to policy considerations in cities and states across the country. In all her work, she has worked on campaigns that hold the largest corporations and financial institutions accountable for their extractive practices in low-income and communities of color.

Cat Salonek Schaldt

Based at: Tending The Soil

Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota

Cat is a lifelong Minneapolis, Minnesota resident. She has worked across labor and community sectors and borders to bring low wage, poor, multiracial, and geographically diverse communities together for common good. Cat has helped foster movements like Occupy Wall Street’s efforts to reclaim foreclosed homes and win the largest bank payouts in history. She has organized mass direct actions in the streets of Minneapolis and around the country to hold major corporations accountable. Her work has taken her out of the streets to successfully lobby to pass local, state and federal policies. But when corporations and government interventions aren’t enough she has worked to create worker/tenant owned cooperative structures for people to work, play and live. She is currently the executive director of Tending the Soil, a community and labor alignment organization. She has worked for CWA and as national campaign lead, organizing spoken language interpreters and challenging misclassification laws