Maria Fernanda (Mafe) Cabello is the Training Director of the Build the Base Program at the workplace justice lab@RU. In this role, she oversees programs to support worker centers and economic justice organizations to recruit and involve their core constituencies to build the capacity to act for themselves. Mafe is an immigrant from Mexico with 15 years of experience as a community organizer. Mafe has been instrumental in driving campaigns and initiatives focused on racial, economic, and environmental justice, as well as immigrant rights and civic participation. Her expertise spans from leading the development and implementation of a national training strategy at Made to Save, mobilizing communities of color to get vaccinated against COVID-19, to her role as Coaching Director at Momentum, where she provided guidance and support to organizers and activists, supporting them to build powerful campaigns for social justice. Mafe is a co-founder of Movimiento Cosecha, a non-violent popular movement aimed at securing permanent protection, dignity, and respect for all immigrants.

Kamau Franklin (he/him) is the founder of Community Movement Builders. He’s been a dedicated community organizer for over thirty years. For 18 years, Kamau was a leading member of a national grassroots organization dedicated to the ideas of self-determination and the teachings of Malcolm X. He’s spearheaded organizing work in areas, including youth organizing, police misconduct, and developing sustainable urban communities. Kamau has coordinated community cop-watch programs, liberation schools for youth, electoral and policy campaigns, large-scale community gardens, organizing collectives and alternatives to incarceration programs. Kamau was an attorney for ten years in New York with his own practice in criminal, civil rights and transactional law. He now lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

Arthur Pye (he/him) is a writer and community organizer based in the Pacific Northwest. He spent a year living in North-East Syria studying the Rojava revolution, and is a member of the Emergency Committee for Rojava. His writing can be found in Strange Matters Magazine. He is also Co-Director of the Municipalism Learning Series.

Belinda Rodríguez is a community organizer, trainer, and social movement nerd. Belinda co-founded Momentum in 2014, a project that supports organizers to plan decentralized campaigns that can escalate to scale and win. A Cuban American originally from Miami, she currently lives in Baltimore, where she organizes for housing justice. Belinda loves facilitating participatory decision-making processes and uses her work as a product manager in civic technology as her learning lab for experimentation. Belinda is also Associate Editor of the Municipalist Organizing Toolkit.