Core Organizer/Trainers & Trainer Apprentices (COTA):

James Addington is a training and organizational development consultant with the Minnesota Collaborative AntiRacism Initiative (MCARI) – a long-time regional partner of Crossroads – and served for eleven years as its co-director. He has 30 years experience in community development, leadership training, organizational development and strategic planning. James spent ten years in a variety of international local and regional development projects including in Jamaica, Venezuela, India, the Philippines and Nigeria; directed the Lutheran Coalition for Public Policy in Minnesota (an advocacy and public policy education arm of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) for nine years; and served as adjunct faculty at Luther Seminary.

Joy Bailey has been the Director of Organizing and Training for Crossroads since 2011 and has been a Core/Organizer Trainer since 2008. She has her Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Education and her Master’s in Socio-cultural Studies in Education, both from Western Michigan University (WMU). Formerly, Joy taught high school Spanish for six years in Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) and also taught courses on race and racism in education at WMU. Joy has been doing local antiracism organizing in Kalamazoo Public Schools since 2001. Although originally from North Dakota, Joy currently lives with her spouse in Kalamazoo, MI.

Joy Bailey ha sido la Directora de Organizar y Entrenamiento en Crossroads desde el 2011 y ha sido una de las entrenadoras de Crossroads desde el 2008. Ella tiene su bachillerato en Educación de Español y su licenciado en Estudios Socio-Culturales en Educacion, ambos de Western Michigan University (WMU). Antes de comenzar sus labores con Crossroads, Joy enseñó Español por seis años en una escuela secundaria parte del sistema de escuelas publicas de Kalamazoo, Michigan (KPS) y también enseñó cursos sobre la raza y el racismo en la educación en WMU. Joy ha estado organizando contra el racismo en KPS desde el 2001 como parte de el equipo anti-racista de el sistema publico. Ella es oriunda de Dakota del Norte y vive actualmente con su esposo en Kalamazoo, MI.

Ryan Bailey is an English teacher at Kalamazoo Central High School and an antiracism activist. Ryan received his BA in English Education from Western Michigan University, his MA in Educational Leadership from Michigan State, and is a Nationally Board Certified teacher. He has participated in a variety of professional educational experiences including a Fulbright-Hayes exchange to Senegal and presentations to the National Council of Teacher’s of English. Ryan’s antiracism development began and continues within the context of the organizing work of Crossroads and ERAC/CE. Ryan also coaches Kalamazoo Central’s woman’s tennis team and is the co-owner of Two Birds Artisan Spirits, an artisanal distillery based in Southwest Michigan. An avid home-brewer, vintner, writer, reader, outdoors man, cook, traveler, and tennis player, Ryan makes his home in Kalamazoo, MI with his partner Joy.

Willard Bass is Director/Organizer of one of Crossroads’ regional organizing partners the Institute for Dismantling Racism (IDR) in Winston-Salem NC, and is also a Crossroads Organizer/Trainer Apprentice. In addition, he is Assistant Pastor of Outreach, Green Street United Methodist Church. Willard is engaged in a broad range of civic and church activities focused in various ways on building and enhancing community and dismantling racism including serving on Crossroads Board. He and Shirley Lewis Bass, his wife of more than 34 years, have three children who are making vocations in medicine and industry.

Laurie Beckman Yetzer is a diaconal minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). She is a graduate of Augburg College and Luther Seminary. Laurie currently works as the Finance Director at Redeemer Lutheran Church and its associated community development organization, Redeemer Center for Life in north Minneapolis. She was instrumental in founding, and currently serves as the co-chair of the Unite Table of the Minneapolis Area Synod, ELCA, which is tasked with developing and evaluating strategies for growing diversity and addressing structural racism throughout the synod. She has previously worked as an organizer, trainer and program director with ISAIAH, Interfaith Children’s Advocacy Network, Lutheran Volunteer Corps and Partnership for Justice.

Jyaphia is a community organizer, sociologist and community chef who lives in New Orleans. Her experience includes over 20 years of work in program planning, evaluation and facilitation in a wide range of human service and social justice contexts. She has served in the fields of workforce development, adult education, youth development, food justice, public health and disaster recovery. As an Antiracism Organizer/Trainer, Jyaphia works with Crossroads, with the Unitarian Universalist Association, and belongs to European Dissent, a collective of antiracist white people associated with People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. She is active in a lay ministry of “Radical Hospitality” that aims to foster strong multiracial justice-making networks.

Derrick Dawson is a member of the AntiRacism Commission of the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago, and served as its Co-Chair for three years. He is the Training Manager at the Chicago law firm of Barack Ferrazzano Kirschbaum & Nagelberg in Chicago, and is a graduate student and teaching assistant in English Composition at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. Derrick was also a broadcaster and journalist in the United States Navy, where he served for eight years on ships in Asia and the Pacific.

Louise Derman-Sparks was a human development faculty member at Pacific Oaks College from 1974-2007 and has worked with young children and families as an early childhood education teacher and program director. She has authored and co-authored several books including 2nd edition of Anti-Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves (with Julie Olsen Edwards, NAYEC 2010) and the 2nd edition of “What if all the kids are white? Anti-bias, multicultural education for young children and families” (with Patricia Ramsey). Louise speaks, conducts workshops and consults widely throughout the U.S. and internationally. A former member of the Governing Board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (1998-2002), she is currently working on a new book, “Building anti-bias early childhood programs: The leader’s role.” Louise has been an activist for social justice for over 50 years.

Robette Dias has been Executive Co-Director and a Core Organizer/Trainer since 2002. Prior to that she was an antiracism program coordinator for the Unitarian Universalist Association’s (UUA) Faith In Action Department, providing training, technical support and advocacy for the Journey Toward Wholeness antiracism initiative. As a Karuk Indian, Robette brings a specifically indigenous perspective to antiracism organizing. She is a founding member and past president of Diverse & Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries (DRUUMM), the continental support and advocacy organization for UUA People of Color. She is currently Board President of Oyate, a Native American resource and advocacy organization.

Emily Drew is an Associate Professor of American Ethnic Studies at Willamette University, where she teaches courses about race, racism, and social change. She received her education from Jesuit universities, as well as from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond in New Orleans as a youth organizer and activist with European Dissent. Today, Drew is actively engaged in the educational reform and immigrant justice movements, producing research and engaging in campaigns to create access to education, restore families, and abolish the prison-industrial complex. Her research agenda revolves around understanding how race and racism operate inside of social institutions, with the goal of helping to illuminate more effective strategies for building more equitable institutions and society.

Bill Gardiner currently works as an antiracism consultant in the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). He is also a member of the Board of Crossroads. Bill was the Director for Antiracism and Social Justice Empowerment Programs in the Department for Faith in Action at the UUA in Boston, Massachusetts from 1990 through 2004. Before that Bill served as a parish minister in Washington DC, Nashville TN and Philadelphia PA.

PaKou Her, a second-generation Asian American of Hmong descent, is founder and principal organizer/trainer of the Tseng Development Group, a training and consulting firm offering lectures, workshops, organizational development, and grassroots strategies rooted in People of Color’s histories and worldviews. TDG’s mission is to provide the skills and education necessary to fully engage and include People of Color in social change, and to assist organizations in becoming more equitable institutions. PaKou takes particular interest in the psychosocial trauma that internalized oppression creates in and among People of Color. She also has extensive experience in student, campaign, political, and online organizing. PaKou lives in Missouri with her spouse, Nathan, and daughters, Lola Shua Tseng and Felan Nou Kang.

Mary Pat Martin is an Early Childhood Education professional with experience as a director of an Early Childhood Program. She is currently a professor at Oakton Community College in Illinois, and is also a member of the Oakton antiracism team. She has an M.A. in Early Childhood and a M.Ed. Mary Pat has also been an elementary and preschool teacher and an early childhood education consultant in the Chicago area. She has done extensive consulting and training in culturally relevant and anti-bias education. Mary Pat has been associated with Crossroads for more than fifteen years.

B. Jo Ann Mundy is the co-Executive Director and Organizer/Facilitator with ERAC/Ce (Eliminating Racism and Claiming/ Celebrating Equality), a regional organizing partner of Crossroads in southwest Michigan. She serves on the boards of World Fare, a fair-trade store; the OutCenter of Benton Harbor, MI; Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training; and is a founding mentor of the NIA Project where she encourages the celebrations of identity, purpose and sisterhood in adolescent women of color. Enjoying over 20 years of pastoral ministry, Jo Ann currently serves as a solo pastor of On Common Ground (formerly First Baptist Church) of Three Rivers, MI and is a founding member of the Three Rivers Area Faith Community, an ecumenical and faith-based social justice network of church where she completed her doctoral thesis in “Sacred Action to Claim and Anti-Racist Identity in the Faith Community of Three Rivers Michigan.” Jo Ann enjoys reading, music, her guitars and computers and, most of all, the young people in her life.

Chuck Ruehle is a member of Coming Together Racine, a local community-based antiracism organizing effort in Racine, WI. He is also the retired former Executive Co-Director of Crossroads and continues to serve as a core organizer/trainer consultant with Crossroads. Since 1971 he has led antiracism workshops and produced antiracism organizing and training curriculum and resources. Chuck is a Lutheran Pastor and he served an urban parish, Reformation Lutheran Church in Milwaukee, from 1986 to 1995. In 2010 he founded the Telescopes to Tanzania program. Currently he travels to Tanzania, East Africa for a month each year to teach astronomy, math, physics, and geography. He is also an artist. He lives in Racine with his wife, Pastor Susan Ruehle.

Sue Ruehle has been organizing, teaching and training on issues of oppression for over 25 years. She has worked as a teacher, congregational pastor and assistant to the bishop in the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA). She recently retired as pastor from a Milwaukee area congregation. Along with her husband Chuck she has created antiracism training resources. She is also a poet.

Victor Rodriguez is an educator, writer and trainer whose area of expertise is the racialization of Latino identity and its impact on political behavior. He is a sociologist, professor and former chair of the Dept. of Chicano and Latino Studies at California University, Long Beach. Victor has written extensively, and published “Latino Politics in the United States: Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Class in the Mexican American and Puerto Rican Experience” in 2005. His most recent publication is “The Racialization of Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Asians, 1890′s-1930′s” in Eds. John N. Tsuchida, Juan M. Benitez and Dean S. Toji Education, Youth, Leadership and Labor: Asian Pacific American and Latino Perspectives, Long Beach, CA Center for Asian Pacific American Studies, 2007. He is a former Co-Chair of Crossroads Board.

Michael Russell is the pastor of the Jubilee Faith Community of the ELCA (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) in Country Club Hills, IL. Prior to that he did community organizing with Neighborhood Housing Services, Inc in Chicago’s West Englewood community. Michael has a Masters of Divinity from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and has completed post graduate studies at the Keller Graduate School of Business Management in Chicago IL. Michael is also an antiracism trainer and organizer with Crossroads. He co-authored “Lazarus at the Gate: Writings and Reflections on Poverty and Wealth,” a resource of the ELCA Poverty Ministries Networking program unit for Church in Society. He currently is vice president of SOUL, a grassroots coalition of faith based organizations focused on economic justice, leadership training and political responsibility in Chicago’s Southland. Most importantly though, he is a child of God, partner of Debra, father to Justin, Chandra, and Evan, and grandfather to Gabriel. They are inspiration for his antiracism work.

Anne Stewart has worked as an Organizer/Trainer for Crossroads since 1992. She believes that her life experience has prepared her to focus on systemic racism. That experience includes: growing up in Mississippi, teaching high school English on Chicago’s South and West Sides, counseling individuals and couples, teaching and social work in an Early Childhood setting, and parenting and grand-parenting African Americans.

Carmen Valenzuela is Coordinator and former Co-Director of the Minnesota Collaborative AntiRacism Initiative (MCARI), a long-time regional partner of Crossroads. Born and raised in Arizona, she lived in Minneapolis for over 25 years and has recently returned home. She has a variety of management and training experience both in the corporate and nonprofit sectors. Active in MCARI since its inception in 1993, she has a long history of activism in ecumenical church and community organizations that have worked to understand the dynamics and intersections of gender, class and “race.” In the last ten years she has worked on integrating the antiracism analysis and transformation lens to the organizational development process and participative strategic planning. Through MCARI, Carmen also brings particular experience in antiracism team development in the higher education and government sectors. She holds a masters degree from United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities in New Brighton, Minnesota. Carmen currently serves on the Board of Crossroads as the secretary/treasurer.

A native of Puerto Rico, Jessica identifies as a “1.5 generation Queer ESL Latina of Puerto Rican descent.” From 1999 until the Spring of 2006 Jessica worked in the Office of [Racial] Reconciliation of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Indianapolis, IN. From 2006 to 2008 she worked as National Religious Outreach Coordinator with Interfaith Worker Justice, and from 2008 to 2010 as Director of Master Level Recruitment and Admissions at McCormick Theological Seminary (both in Chicago, IL). Currently, Jessica is working on a Masters of Theological Studies at the Chandler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. When not studying she works as a consultant and core/organizer trainer for Crossroads. Rev. Vazquez Torres holds a BA in Criminal Justice from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL and a Masters of Divinity from Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, IN.

Karen Ziech organizes and trains in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago where she has been a member of the Anti-racism Commission since 2008, serving as co-chair from 2008 – 2012. As a member of Chicago Regional Organizing for Antiracism (C-ROAR) she is working to build a network of antiracist allies in the Chicago area. Karen spent 20 years as a professional volunteer, organizing women and parents around various issues. She moved into instructional design and training in the telecom industry where she worked for nearly fifteen years. As a career consultant in the outplacement industry, she taught laid-off employees job search skills e.g. resume writing, interviewing, negotiating, social media and networking. Karen loves spending time with her four children and their kids (eleven grandchildren and counting), practicing yoga, reading and walking.