CFJ Staff
Oakland Staff
Jesse Bachrach, Finance and Administrative Director, manages CFJ’s finances, technology, and operations. He spends as much time as possible meditating on Excel’s columns & rows. He joined the administrative team in 2006 after completing his Masters in Social Work with a focus on community organizing, policy, and research from San Francisco State, where Tim Sampson was a key faculty member. He is inspired by CFJ’s dual focus on local and statewide arenas and its background in electoral organizing. His past experience ranges from organizing queer youth conferences with LYRIC to supporting youth-led action research projects at Youth in Focus, and from running a dog-walking business to making stainless steel body piercing jewelry. As a child growing up in the privileged enclave of Piedmont, he benefited from the unequal public school system and wealth distribution and developed a belief in accountability and using his privilege to further the cause of justice. To those ends, he is active with International Jewish Anti Zionist Network and Resource Generation. He loves dogs, food, books, creative projects, and clear sunny skies in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Eli Conley, Development Associate, is a white queer transgender man who grew up in and around Richmond, Virginia. He is excited to be working for youth-led racial justice in California’s schools by supporting staff and student leaders as grassroots fundraisers. He helps train, strategize and cheerlead to build community support and ownership of CFJ through donations from friends, family, and allies. In 2008, he received his BA in Comparative American Studies from Oberlin College, focusing his studies on histories and practices of social change. He is passionate about funding the social justice movement from the people in that movement, and credits the Catalyst Project with training him in grassroots fundraising as a strategy for anti-racist organizing and movement-building. He feels privileged to have been able to work with Critical Resistance, the Oberlin College Transgender Advocacy Group, and the Edmonia Lewis Center for Women and Transgender People in recent years. In his spare time, Eli sings classical music, plays and writes folk and country songs with his friends, and eats vegan baked goods.
Terri Dunn, Part-time Bookkeeper, is responsible for payroll, accounts receivables, and accounts payable. She works full time with Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), a non-profit organization that works with low-income and homeless people. She has been with CFJ since 2000. Though she is not involved with day-to-day organizing, she is very inspired by the great and needed work that CFJ organizers do daily. She has volunteered with CFJ since the No On Proposition 227 Campaign in 1998 . She enjoys traveling, cooking, and spending as much time with family members as possible. She is committed to working on issues and solutions that impact her community.
charles houston, Technology and Administrative Associate, handles the day-to-day office management for the CFJ headquarters in Oakland and coordinates regional administrative needs. He is also the technology guru for the staff. He left the for-profit world to work with CFJ because he believes in its youth organizing work and its commitment to grassroots empowerment at both the regional and statewide level. He is strongly committed to working with low-income and oppressed communities. He holds a BA in Native American Studies from the University of California, Berkeley, where he learned true leftist organizing in the late 90's. He was part of the student walkouts throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in response to Propositions 187, 209, and 21 that targeted immigrants, communities of color and youth, respectively. He is a fan of all things Star Wars and a member of the Left Wing Futbol Club.
Carmen Iñiguez, Statewide Campaign Director, oversees the Campaign for Quality Education (CQE), a statewide coalition of grassroots, civil rights, policy and research organizations committed to educational equity for all communities in California public schools. She has been at CFJ since 2002, when she organized high school students to stop the California High School Exit Exam. The daughter of Mexican immigrants, she was born and raised in Wilmington, California. She became involved in organizing around environmental justice at the age of 15 in her hometown where she started developing her political consciousness through the Labor Community Strategy Center's (LCSC) National School of Organizers. She continued organizing in college working on education access issues, from affirmative action to higher education for undocumented students. She graduated from UCLA with a BA in Communication Studies. She enjoys traveling abroad and all things en Español: novelas, libros y mas. She is in the process of becoming a certified Life Coach and is excited to bring those skills back to the non-profit world.
Hana Maria Mendoza, Development Manager, raises funds through individual, foundation, and corporate donations, cultivates donor relationships, develops grant reports for funders, and stays abreast of the philanthropic community. She has wanted to work in social justice since she was a child, influenced by School House Rock’s “How a Bill Becomes a Law” and letter-writing campaigns. At age eleven, she wrote her first letter in support to end domestic violence. She has worked in the nonprofit field for fourteen years, all of which have been in service of low-income children and families. In West Oakland, she developed the Prescott Family Resource Center Clothes Closet and delivered voter education workshops for low- income mothers. While she worked as a GED Instructor, she developed a self-empowerment and emotional health program for teen girls in West Oakland, Girl Power Now! The program is currently available in 3 middle schools in Oakland. Her main campaign is her five children, ages 3, 12, 14, 14, and 21. Currently, she is practicing Chinese fan dancing at home. She loves watching good dramas with great cinematography and reading before going to bed.
Charles McDonald, Statewide Alliance Organizer, is responsible for connecting the transformative work of CFJ staff, youth, and regional allies to the statewide Campaign for Quality Education (CQE). He started with CFJ in April 2008 as the Oakland Lead Organizer. The son of an Italian mother and African-American father, he hails from the “Land of 10,000 Lakes” where he developed his organizing skills fighting for economic and education justice in his St. Paul, Minnesota community. Upon receiving his BA in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Minnesota, he moved to Oakland, California and dedicated three years in the struggle for workers rights’ with organized labor. He is incredibly fortunate and proud to call Oakland home, and will continue to fight alongside California youth for education and racial justice. He has a passion for policy, poetry, and pasta. His favorite activities include storytelling, basketball, reading, writing, and making people smile. He has aspirations to attend law school and support former CFJ staff and youth leaders run for electoral offices.
Yvonne Tran, Lead Organizer in Oakland, works with community college and high school students to build justice not only in their schools, but also in an intergenerational model of organizing. She is responsible for the work at Laney College and Oakland High School, where she coordinates programs built around leadership development, political education, and base-building. She is a native of East San Jose and joined CFJ in the summer of 2001 when she was 15 years old. She holds a BA in Asian American Studies with a minor in Writing from UC Santa Barbara. She is an aficionado of Asian American literature, a fan of hiphopsoulfunk, and a graphic designer. She also loves to travel and eat.
Fresno Staff
Rhea Martin, Youth Organizer in Fresno, is responsible for program planning and developing weekly core meetings at Edison High School. She joined CFJ in 2001 as a sophomore in high school, when she decided to start working towards educational justice, fighting against the educational inequalities that plague the African-American community. As a high school student, she helped to run and win a bathroom improvement campaign in Long Beach. While she worked in Fresno as an organizer, CFJ Fresno managed to cut the student to counselor ration from 800:1 to 450:1 and won new student-friendly A-G posters for every classroom in Fresno Unified. A student at California State University, Fresno, she collects all things Bob Marley and loves pretending she can sing along with her favorite 90’s Hip Hop and R&B acts. As a staff member now, she cannot imagine working on anything more important than uplifting and empowering her community to speak up and demand change.
Gina T. Rodriguez, Lead Organizer in Fresno, coordinates the leadership development, political education, base-building and campaigns of the region. She also leads the base-building and chapter work at Roosevelt High School and organizes grassroots fundraising within CFJ. She is motivated by the determined and driven youth leaders who give their time working to improve their communities by fighting for better schools. She worked on the successful "Your Future, Your Life, You Have the Power" which improved access and support to information about college. Students also succeeded in decreasing the student to counselor ratio from 800:1 to 450:1 and worked to develop a new A-G Requirement poster that will be placed in every classroom and counselor office in all middle and high schools in Fresno Unified School district. She was the first person in her family to graduate from a university, finishing with a degree in Women's Studies and Liberal Studies from California State University, Fresno. She enjoys listening to R&B and hip hop music from the 90's.
Ernesto Saavedra, Youth Organizer in the Fresno region, works on base-building at Fresno High School (his alma mater), maintaining relationships with key local organizations and individuals, and creating allies and overall 'people power' for regional campaigns and actions. Before coming to CFJ, he was part of the college student group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/a de Aztlan (MEChA) and helped organize local May Day rallies/marches around immigrant rights, annual Cesar Chavez marches and events, and the 34th and 35th annual Fresno Chican@ Youth Conference. He was also active in the IMAGINE CHANGE COALITION, which showed progressive and radical films on a wall behind a restaurant at no cost. He graduated from Fresno State with a BA in Psychology and Sociology and also earned an American Humanics national certification in non-profit leadership and management. During his free time, he enjoys reading books to further develop his consciousness and listening to underground and conscious hip hop.
San Jose Staff
Janelle Ishida, Organizing Director, coordinates and supports campaigns, basebuilding, and leadership development in CFJ’s four regions. She also oversees the political and skills development of organizing staff and manages statewide staff and leader retreats and gatherings. She became involved with CFJ in January 2000 as a college volunteer around the Proposition 21 and 22 campaigns where she did outreach, knocked on doors, and phonebanked in San Jose to fight against the attack on youth of color and the LGBT community. When she saw firsthand the power of grassroots organizing, she knew she was committed to movement building. A graduate of Stanford University with a double major in Ethnic Studies and Feminist Studies, she was a founder of
liberation ink—a worker-owned printing and design collective created to fund social justice organizing in the Bay Area. She grew up in Hawaii and has a great family from Molokai to San Jose to Berkeley to Colorado. She enjoys playing ultimate Frisbee and spending time with her wife.
Rosa De Leon, Youth Organizer in San Jose, where she builds CFJ’s base, conducts
leadership and organizing workshops, and develops alliances with
community organizations and institutions. Currently a student at UC
Berkeley, she has organized
parents and students for three years.
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, Lead Organizer in San Jose, works at Silver Creek and James Lick High Schools, where she builds CFJ’s base, conducts leadership and organizing workshops, and develops alliances with community organizations and institutions.
Long Beach Staff
César Castrejón, Long Beach Organizer, focuses on base building and supporting local high school chapters at Renaissance High, Cabrillo High, and Long Beach Poly High. He helps students identify critical issues affecting their schools and seeks to unite them in an equal struggle. He is passionate about nurturing the growth of young leaders and giving them the tools and the support they need to become well rounded and strong leaders. He comes to organizing and social and racial justice through exposure to his parent’s community activism. He cut his teeth as a student and youth organizer with Southwest Youth Collaborative and Generation Y on the South Side of Chicago. He enjoys listening to live music, including Hip Hop, jazz, blues, reggae, and ska. He is a fan of the Chicago White Sox, Bulls, and Bears.
Samantha Knox, Youth Organizer in Long Beach, develops student leaders through trainings, workshops, and presentations. She came to CFJ to play an active role in her community by educating and empowering youth around social and racial justice issues. As a student leader with CFJ, she worked on the Bathroom Campaign, which sought accessible, clean, and stocked bathrooms be made available at all Long Beach high schools. This effort became district policy and was included in the landmark Williams vs. California settlement. Recently, she and student leaders launched CFJ chapter at Poly/PAAL High School that has evolved into a mentoring program to lower student drop-out and push-out rates. In her free time, she enjoys spending time with her family, making dinner with her partner, and playing with her daughter.
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, Executive Director, provides support, vision, and leadership for CFJ to live out its mission and achieve its strategic goals. His responsibilities include working with CFJ’s statewide Board of Directors to ensure organizational and financial stability, supporting the organizing and statewide staff to lead successful and proactive educational justice campaigns, and developing relationships with donors and funders to raise funds for movement work. He came to CFJ because of the opportunity to work with an incredible team of staff, youth leaders, and board members dedicated to building a statewide movement for racial justice in our schools. He is motivated by all the dynamic, creative, and passionate movement leaders he has met, from high school students to the directors of other organizations. Prior to moving to California in 2004, he spent ten years organizing for racial and educational justice with African American, Latino, and Arab American youth in southwest Chicago. In his free time, he enjoys playing capoeira with his second family, Omulu Guanabara Capoeira of Los Angeles and spending time with his two-and-a-half year old daughter, Adila, and his partner, Maria, in their South L.A. neighborhood.
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, paulATcaljusticeDOTorg, Communications Director, develops media strategy for statewide and local campaigns, manages online and print materials, and advises on policy. As a refugee and urban public school student, he knows firsthand the challenges and transformative powers of public education and is excited about CFJ’s work, especially its regional organizing in his hometown of Long Beach, California. Before coming to CFJ, he coordinated leadership training in public affairs programs for Coro Northern California and worked as a legislative aide in the City of Oakland where he worked on the Equal Access Ordinance, the first municipal language access bill in the nation. He holds a BA in History and MA in Asian American Studies from UCLA. In another life, he is working on short story collection set within the Vietnamese Diaspora. He enjoys live music, traveling, and playing basketball.
