Director
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Ai-jen Poo is the Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), the leading organization working to build power, respect, and fair labor standards for the 2.5 million nannies, housekeepers and elderly caregivers in the U.S. She began organizing immigrant women workers in 1996 as the Women Workers Project organizer at CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities in New York City. In 2000, she co-founded Domestic Workers United (DWU), a city-wide, multiracial organization of domestic workers. DWU led the way to the passage of the nation’s first Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2010, historic legislation that extends basic labor protections to over 200,000 domestic workers in New York state. DWU helped to organize the first national meeting of domestic worker organizations at the US Social Forum in 2007, which resulted in the formation of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. She has been NDWA’s director since April 2010. Ai-jen serves on the Board of Social Justice Leadership, the Seasons Fund for Social Transformation, the Labor Advisory Board at Cornell ILR School, Momsrising, National Jobs with Justice, the New Labor Forum Editorial Board, Working America and the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.
Ai-jen was the 2000 recipient of an Open Society Institute New York City Community Fellowship, the recipient of the Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World Award, the Ernest de Maio Award from Labor Research Association, the Woman of Vision Award from Ms. Foundation for Women and in 2009 was named as one of Crain's "40 Under 40" and New York Moves Magazine "Power Women" Awards. More recently, she is a recipient of the Alston Bannerman Fellowship for Organizers of Color, the Twink Frey Visiting Scholar Fellowship at University of Michigan Center for the Education of Women, and the Prime Movers Fellowship. In 2010, Feminist Press recognized her in their "40 Under 40" awards. In honor of the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day, Ai-jen was recognized by Women Deliver as one of 100 women internationally who are "delivering" for other women. In 2011, she received Independent Sector’s American Express NGen Leadership Award. In 2012, Ai-jen was named on Newsweek’s 150 Fearless Women list and on the Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. Her work has been profiled in multiple publications, including The Nation, Ms. Magazine, and The New York Times.
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 Barbara Young
National Organizer
Barbara has been a domestic worker for the past 17 years, and is well acquainted with both the exploitation domestic workers face—and the potential of domestic workers to organize for lasting change. She is an active member of Domestic Workers United (DWU), one of the NDWA’s founding affiliate organizations, and has provided consistent and inspiring leadership for the NDWA since its foundation.
Barbara was instrumental in mobilizing her fellow domestic workers to win the Domestic Workers’ Bill of Rights in New York. She now uses her experiences with the Bill of Rights campaign to inspire and motivate domestic workers in other parts of the country to fight for similar protections. As a member of DWU’s Steering Committee for the past eight years, Barbara has helped grow DWU’s membership and deepen its impact through a simultaneous commitment to the organization’s internal operations and its external work. Barbara is a powerful public speaker who has represented DWU and the NDWA in numerous events and in the media. She has helped build bridges between sectors of excluded workers within the U.S. through testimony at the Excluded Workers’ Congress, and has worked to build a global domestic workers’ movement through collaborations with Grassroots Global Justice and the Association for Women in Development. Prior to moving to the U.S., Barbara was active in the labor movement in her native Barbados. She looks forward to the opportunity to work on a larger scale for domestic workers’ rights through her new position as National Organizer.
 Jill Shenker
Field Director
Jill Shenker has been with the National Domestic Workers Alliance since its founding and came on as NDWA’s first staff person in the fall of 2009. In her current role as Field Director, she leads the capacity building program of the Alliance, connects our national campaign to local organizing, supports movement building collaborations like the Excluded Workers Congress, and leads the US campaign for an ILO Convention for Decent Work for Domestic Workers.
Prior to coming onto staff at NDWA, Jill was the coordinator of the Women's Collective of the Day Labor Program of La Raza Centro Legal between 2003-2009. There, she helped build a strong domestic worker organization, campaigned with domestic workers for hundreds of thousands in back wages, facilitated the leadership development of members who now staff and lead the Collective, forged multi-sector coalitions, advocated for local and statewide policy changes, and co-founded the National Domestic Workers Alliance. Originally from Colorado Springs, CO, she has been active in racial, economic, and environmental justice struggles in the Bay Area since 1996. This work has included leading youth arts activism programs with Gay-Straight Alliance Network and COLAGE (Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere), collaborating with the Challenging White Supremacy political education workshops, and working with other Jews around human rights in the Middle East. She is a co-founder, collective owner, and designer with Liberation Ink (www.liberationink.com), a worker-owned apparel printing and design collective created to fund social justice organizing. In 2000, she graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity.
 Jodeen Olguín-Tayler
Campaign Director
Jodeen has been organizing in movements connected to the NDWA for over 10 years. She is driven by the inheritance of struggle passed down by her grandmother and other women in her family who have been domestic workers, and is excited to dedicate her campaign leadership skills to winning victories for domestic workers’ justice and dignity.
Jodeen’s organizing experience includes Lead Organizer and Deputy Field Director positions at MoveOn.org; Organizer, Lead Organizer and Boycott Coordinator positions at UNITE-HERE!; and the Organizing Director position at the Community Alliance for Sustainable Economy and Monterey Bay Central Labor Council. In all of her organizing work, Jodeen has exhibited a deep commitment and skills for promoting grassroots leadership for nationally-scaled campaigns. She has supported the leadership of affiliate organizations and member-leaders to advance local campaigns while engaging local groups in nationally-coordinated strategic work. Jodeen’s commitment to centering the voices of women of color and low-wage workers has been evidenced by her design of participatory processes to develop campaign strategy and tactics from the ground up, while gaining the support of diverse allies.
Jodeen is a skilled trainer who has developed and led national leadership development programs, organizer trainings, organizational development and direct action workshops. She is also a co-founder of People’s Durham, a political education and movement-building center in Durham, North Carolina. Jodeen does her work in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and has a strong track record for building diverse coalitions.
Linda Burnham
National Research Coordinator
Linda Burnham brings decades of experience as an activist, writer, strategist, and organizational consultant focused on women’s rights and anti-racism. She feels a particular connection with domestic workers, as many of the women in her family who moved here from Barbados did this work as new immigrants. Before coming on as the National Research Coordinator, she provided organizational consulting to Domestic Workers United and facilitated the Gender Justice from the Grassroots Inter-Alliance Dialogue gathering in March 2010.
Linda Burnham is co-founder of the Women of Color Resource Center (WCRC) and was its Executive Director for 18 years. WCRC was a non-profit education, community action and resource center committed to developing a strong, institutional foundation for social change activism by and on behalf of women of color. Burnham has been working on racial justice and peace issues since the 1960s and on women-of-color issues since the early 1970s. She was a leader in the Third World Women’s Alliance, a national organization that was an early advocate for the rights of women of color. In 1990, together with Miriam Ching Louie, she co-founded Women of Color Resource Center. Burnham has published numerous articles on African-American women, African-American politics, and feminist theory in a wide range of periodicals and anthologies. A particular focus of her writing, organizing and advocacy work has been the impact of welfare policy and the lives of low- and no-income women and their families. Burnham led delegations of women of color to the 1985 UN World Conference on Women in Nairobi, Kenya and the 1995 UN World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. In 2001 she led a delegation of 25 women of color activists and scholars to the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa. In 2004, Burnham was a leader of Count Every Vote, a human rights project that trained citizens to monitor the polls for the presidential election in the southern states. In 2005, Burnham was nominated as one of 1000 Peace Women for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 2008, she was awarded the Twink Frey Social Activist Fellowship at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2009, she edited the anthology, Changing the Race: Racial Politics and the Election of Barack Obama. Burnham is a frequent featured speaker on college campuses and to community groups, addressing issues of women’s rights, racial justice, human rights and peace.
In her consulting practice, Burnham focuses on working with social justice organizations that are committed to intentionally and systematically integrating racial justice and gender justice frameworks and values into organizing, advocacy and communications. Burnham’s writing and organizing are part of a lifelong inquiry into the dynamic, often perilous intersections of race, class and gender. Burnham has practiced and taught yoga for decades and is also an avid student of African and African diasporic dance.
Maria Reyes
National Organizer
Maria has been an active member of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (MUA), one of the NDWA’s founding member organizations, since 1999. She is a committed worker-leader within the NDWA who has mobilized countless other domestic workers to build support for the California Bill of Rights Campaign and other NDWA initiatives. As an immigrant woman with experience as a domestic worker, and as a long-time community organizer, Maria is excited to focus her energies on building the NDWA and winning victories with other domestic workers in her new role as National Organizer.
Over the years, Maria has served in a number of leadership positions within MUA, including President of MUA’s Board of Directors, member of MUA’s Strategic Planning Committee, peer counselor, group facilitator, and campaign leader. Maria is a graduate of numerous organizer and community leadership trainings, and has used her skills to build MUA’s membership and mobilize her community around critical issues related to the rights of immigrants, women and excluded workers. She is a skilled public speaker who has facilitated know-your-rights presentations and workshops on domestic violence and sexual assault, and has represented both MUA and the NDWA with the media, at conferences and in coalitions. Maria has participated in a number of strategic actions including the Hunger Strike for Justice for Immigrants and the cross-country Immigrant Workers’ Freedom Ride, and is known for speaking out eloquently and powerfully on behalf of her community.
 Mariana Viturro
Deputy Director
Mariana has been an organizer in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 12 years, and has experienced first-hand the potential of working-class immigrant women to advance movements for immigrant and workers’ rights. Mariana brings strong organizational development skills to the NDWA, as well as a commitment to creating a culture of support, accountability, and solidarity within women of color led organizations.
As Deputy Director, Mariana will utilize both the organizing and operations skills she has developed through her work at a number of organizations. As Co-Director of Saint Peter’s Housing in San Francisco, Mariana ensured the organization’s financial stability, built alliances and coalitions, and guided a programmatic transition from service provision to direct action organizing. Through this transition, she collaborated with others to develop the organizing skills of staff, provide direction and coordination for campaigns, facilitate member political education, and innovate the organization’s new base-building model. As Transitions Director for Just Cause::Causa Justa, Mariana facilitated the merger of two grassroots groups while building staff communications plans to ensure the creation of a cohesive whole. In her years as a housing, immigrant rights, and anti-racism organizer, Mariana has facilitated participatory processes for developing campaign issues and demands, strategy and tactics. Mariana is also an accomplished Spanish-English interpreter who is able to build strong multiracial and multi-lingual alliances.
 Yashna Maya Padamsee
Administrative Coordinator
Yashna is both a skilled administrator and a dedicated social justice organizer. She is committed to building solid administrative systems as a foundation for organizing work, and looks forward to contributing these skills to the domestic workers’ movement.
As Coordinator of Adult Literacy Programs at the Durham Literacy Center (DLC), Yashna developed skills as an advocate, administrator, educator, and program manager. At the DLC and other organizations, Yashna streamlined office systems and developed new methods for utilizing media and technology to support community work. Using strong curriculum design and facilitation skills, Yashna has mentored grassroots leaders into organizational leadership roles. As a member of Ubuntu (a women of color collective working on issues of sexual violence), and through her work at the National Farm Worker Ministry and her participation in a recent Community Organizer Residency Program at the Bay Area Industrial Areas Foundation, Yashna has honed organizing skills for work in an intersectional movement.
Yashna is also a visual artist with strong design skills, and a facilitator of yoga and transformative healing practices within a liberatory, anti-oppression framework
 Perla Placencia
Lead Organizer
Perla’s community organizing work has centered on building strong and committed memberships and leadership development in campaigns addressing privatization and inequity in public schools and building parent-teacher-community partnerships to improve public schools, voter engagement and education, and economic development in disenfranchised communities. Prior to NDWA, Perla was the primary coordinator of the Center for Immigrant Families (CIF) in NYC where she trained as a popular educator through organizing with Latina immigrant women. In this work, her love for the power of storytelling deepened as she understood the importance of sharing one’s life story to build individual, community, and movement connections. Perla also had the opportunity to collaborate with members and allies in the development of media and art work to communicate the stories of students and parents while strengthening the organizing efforts to stop the K-2 standardized testing policy that was being considered in NYC, resulting in the short film “180 Days Well Spent: Creating Good Schools for Our Children” and a community-led play “More than a Number.”
The work at CIF motivated Perla to continue doing organizing work in Los Angeles. She was part of the inaugural cohort of Jewish Funds for Justice’s Community Organizing Residency Program and joined the organizing staff of Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE), an organization that builds grassroots power to eliminate the structural barriers to social and economic opportunities for poor and disenfranchised communities in Los Angeles.
Perla first became involved in the domestic workers’ movement as an interpreter for Domestic Workers United in NY. In her role, she helped to facilitate communication among workers to build power across New York and win the nation’s first Domestic Workers Bill of Rights. As the daughter of a domestic worker, she saw firsthand not only the exploitative conditions but also the power of organizing for rights, recognition, and respect. She is honored to bring her passion and experience in organizing to NDWA.
 Felicia Martinez
Assistant to the Director
Felicia Martinez comes to NDWA with many years of experience providing administrative and programmatic support to organizations in California. Most recently, Felicia served as Operations Manager at Causa Justa :: Just Cause (SF/Bay Area) and was instrumental in setting up administrative and communications systems during the merger process that created the organization. Prior to that, Felicia worked at St. Peter’s Housing Committee, at Mills College while she earned her MFA, and at the California Immigrant Policy Center. Felicia has also worked with both youth and adults as a tutor and educator.
 Tara Shuai Ellison
Finance and Operations Director
Tara has been active in feminist, LGBTQ, body liberation, women of color, and other justice-based movements for over a decade, and she brings both her passion for the work and her love of creating organizational systems and structures to NDWA. As Finance and Operations Director, Tara is excited to support NDWA's internal operations through creating robust financial, human resources, and administrative infrastructure.
Prior to joining NDWA, Tara served as Deputy Director at the Third Wave Foundation, a feminist foundation that supports young women and transgender youth in justice movements, primarily in low income communities and communities of color. During her 5 year tenure at Third Wave, she gained extensive skills in a wide range of areas, including financial management, feminist human resources practice, project management, organizational development, board development, and creating robust organizational systems and infrastructures. Before that, Tara also served as the Public Policy and Government Affairs assistant at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, where she supported a team doing state and federal policy work, as well as work around faith and aging. She currently serves as board co-president of NOLOSE, a fat and queer organization.
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