Julien Ross co-founded and helped lead two immigrant justice organizations, Workers Defense Project in Austin, Texas (2002-2006) and Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (2006-2017). At Workers Defense, Julien helped start Austin’s first worker rights center, which has grown into a statewide power achieving fair employment through education, organizing, and direct services. Julien raised critical seed money in the early stages to grow the organization and managed 4 full-time staff.

In Colorado, Julien helped grow the coalition from a budget of $120,000 to $1.1 Million and from a staff of 1 to a team of 14 with 5 offices statewide. Julien supported an immigrant-led Board of 15 Directors and launched a new 501(c)(4) CIRC Action Fund in 2012 which achieved key victories on driver's licenses, in-state tuition and repealing the show-me-your-papers law.

During Julien’s tenure, CIRC participated in multi-year anti-oppression and Diversity-Equity-Inclusion engagement to strive toward a culture that reflected the values we were fighting for in the world.

After transitioning from the Colorado coalition in 2017, Julien was tapped by the Four Freedoms Fund and State Infrastructure Fund to provide executive and organizational management coaching, training, and facilitation to grantees. Julien received coaching training at Rockwood Leadership Institute's Yearlong Fellowship and recently graduated from Rockwood's inaugural 2022 Growing White Leadership For Racial Equity cohort.

Julien was born and raised in the traditional lands of the Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo people, known today as New Mexico. Julien is fluent in Spanish and able to coach and/or train in Spanish. He was a proud restaurant worker for 10 years growing up and is an avid skier, swimmer, and meteorologist/storm forecaster.

Toby is a nonprofit consultant with a focus on executive leadership coaching for startup non-profit executives and leaders of innovative program initiatives.  She is also the Founder of UpStart, an accelerator for early stage nonprofits. During her 10 year tenure as CEO, she built a team of leaders that brought UpStart from an idea to start-up to a high-impact, paradigm-shifting national organization. Prior to founding UpStart, Toby spent 7 years at the BJE-San Francisco filling a variety of roles, including an executive leadership role. Toby holds an undergraduate degree in Political Sociology from UC-Santa Barbara and a J.D. from the University of San Diego.  She currently lives in Marin County to feed her hiking habit, and enjoys nature with husband, Robert Rubin, and visits from their three amazing young adult daughters.

Julie Scarsella is the Managing Director of Community Building Strategies. In this role, she oversees a range of services in the areas of legal compliance, union/management negotiations, organizational finances, human resources, payroll and benefits, and technical/logistical support for multiple for-profit and nonprofit organizations.  

Prior to CBS, Julie gained over 20 years of director-level experience with nationally-known nonprofits. More recently, she held the position of vice president for a community foundation where the team grew assets from $5 million to $55 million within four years. She has also taught undergraduate courses in nonprofit finance, fundraising, and grant development, and held positions on several nonprofit boards. Julie earned her B.A. from Youngstown State University, holds a Master’s of Public Administration from Cleveland State University, and is certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SHRM-SCP). She resides in Youngstown, Ohio with her three rowdy boys who always help keep life interesting.

Gail Aidinoff Scovell is an attorney consultant to nonprofit organizations. She specializes in legal and governance strategy and international operations. Gail is currently working with New Left Accelerator (c4) and The Capacity Shop (c3) to develop the Shared Legal Learning project, a collaborative initiative to identify common legal questions, strengthen connections with movement-aligned lawyers, and expand access to practical legal information.

Gail previously served as General Counsel and Secretary of the Open Society Foundations, the largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance and human rights.  Before joining Open Society, she served as Counsel to the President of Hunter College, City University of New York where she also served as Campus Ethics Officer, and General Counsel of the Guggenheim Museum. Gail began her legal career as a law clerk to the Honorable A. Wallace Tashima and then as a tax associate at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton.

Gail currently serves on the board of PILnet (the Global Network for Public Interest Law) and is a member of the Nonprofit Forum.  She previously served on the Advisory Board of the National Center on Philanthropy and the Law, the Nonprofit Organizations Committee and the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar, and the Steering Committee for ALI-ABA Course of Study, Legal Problems in Museum Administration.

Gail graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Aparna Shah has worked to co-create and catalyze transformative social change for over 25 years. Her consulting practice leads with strategic visioning and embodied practice to cultivate imagination and build power toward collective governance. Under her decade-long tenure as Executive Director, Mobilize the Immigrant Vote/Power California organized 500,000+ young, immigrant, refugee, Indigenous, and voters of color, built the long-term infrastructure and capacity of grassroots multiracial organizations across the state to run electoral and issue campaigns, and established a sister organization, MIV Action Fund/ PowerCA Action. She also co-founded the reset project, which advances governance that centers people and the natural world by holding interdependence, self-determination, and sustainability as sacred. She has worked to advance the reproductive justice of women, people of color, and queer communities and spent several years working to transform a public middle school into a vibrant youth and community center in San Francisco’s Mission District. She was born in Manila, grew up in Mumbai, and lives with her family on unceded Huichin Ohlone lands, known today as Oakland, California.

Howie Stanger is the founder of Pocketbook Strategies, a finance and operations consulting firm that supports diverse progressive organizations to develop their own independent infrastructure to build political power. Howie advises and executes strategy for organizations on corporate and financial structure, multi-entity operations, and financial planning. Previously, he was a Director at Next Level Partners and the COO of Sunrise Movement. He serves on the board of directors of IfNotNow, Momentum, and his Jewish summer camp. He lives in Los Angeles.

Passionate about creating a more equitable world, Dinah supports nonprofit organizations in their efforts to be effective advocates. This includes helping develop organizational infrastructure that supports the building of grassroots political power. She served more than ten years with Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, most recently as Senior Director of Public Affairs, and now brings her experience in advocacy, electoral work, communications, and multi-entity administration to other groups seeking to advance justice. Throughout her career, Dinah has provided leadership on initiatives locally and around the country, working to protect and expand women’s health and rights through legislative and electoral campaigns in several states. She holds a BA from Santa Clara University and a MSc in Global Health Policy from the London School of Economics. Dinah currently resides in Los Angeles, California.

Ananda Valenzuela (any pronouns) provides interim executive director leadership, facilitates organizational transformation, and coaches values-aligned leaders. He is passionate about nourishing joyful organizational cultures, supporting equitable self-management, and building liberatory practices. They have served as interim executive director at multiple organizations, provided capacity-building support to nonprofits for over ten years, and currently sit on the boards of Change Elemental and Hampshire College. Ananda grew up in Puerto Rico and slowly made her way across the United States, holding a variety of consulting, governance, and activist roles along the way.

Josh is currently under contract by Cooperative Impact Lab to provide progressive nonprofits in the launch and growth stages of development with the services they need to strengthen their organizational resilience by providing reliable and consistent finance and operation services, all the while reducing the time, money, and resources they spend on finance and operations. In doing so, Josh aims to alleviate these burdens so that nonprofit leaders and staff can focus their energies on the big and oftentimes complex issues that require significant flexibility and progress.

Josh served as the COO for Cory Booker’s presidential campaign, the Director of Operations for the Mozilla Foundation, and Director of Operations for MoveOn.org. Prior to his near decade of service in finance and operations, Josh was an Organizer for coordinated and candidate campaigns, State Director for SEIU Nevada in 2008, and National Data Services Director for the Democratic National Committee.

With over 30 years’ experience helping leaders address pressing business and organizational challenges, Joel is known for his ability to help leaders dramatically improve performance by leveraging the human side of the enterprise. With start-ups, where founders and leaders need to take smart action under highly complex and uncertain conditions, his work focuses on building the capacity for rapid learning and improvement – particularly when dealing with high conflict/high-stakes situations. Joel has served on a number of corporate and non-profit Boards. Recent director roles have included The African Food and Peace Foundation, CorStone, and Upstart.

Nijmie is a movement strategist and institution builder with 20 years of experience founding and running social justice organizations. She is a co-founder of the Media Mobilizing Project and Put People First! PA and and former Executive Director of the Philadelphia Student Union. Nijmie has been consulting on strategy, leadership development, communications, and racial equity with local, regional, and national organizations and alliances for six years. Some of her clients include the Center for Community Change and the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing. She is a member of RoadMap consulting.