2023 Training Cohort
We're excited to welcome our Training Cohort for 2023!
Members of the cohort will be responsible for co-facilitating our 2023 workshop series in organizing conversations, leadership development, campaign strategy, and coalition building.
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We found a powerful group of organizers who are ready to share their hard-earned wisdom and want to grow their facilitation skills, as well as skilled facilitators who care about shifting power and want to learn more about the organizing skills that help us get there. By hiring and training a mix of organizers and facilitators from our movements, we aim to create an opportunity that ultimately benefits and grows the leadership of The OC, our 2023 training cohort, their organizations, and our movements overall.
Meet Our 2023 Trainers
Eleanor Liu
she/her
Eleanor has over a decade of experience as a facilitator and educator, working in schools, grassroots organizations and collectives. For seven years she focused on housing rights, working directly with tenants fighting to stay in their homes and developing stronger systems to train and support tenant counselors. Whether she is facilitating workshops on creative writing or tenants rights, self defense or transformative justice, Eleanor loves holding space for others to connect, play, and step into their own power. She lives in Oakland, CA.
Jennifer Maldonado (J-Mo)
she/her
J-Mo, as her community calls her, was born and raised in East Los Angeles. She got involved in organizing at the age 16 with InnerCity Struggle(ICS)–organizing her peers in the Eastside for educational justice. She got her first job at ICS as a fellow from the Funders' Collaborative on Youth Organizing (FCYO) and began organizing young people in her community. She's found it rewarding to witness the growth of young people and all they bring to the movement. She then started working with parents to fight for tenant rights. Housing justice is her current interest, passion, mission to create transformative change. Currently, she works as the Program Manager at FCYO supporting organizations across the country in grounding assessments to sharpen our collective movement building approach.
Aurora Muñoz
she/her
Aurora is a Texas Chicana with a deep love for South Philadelphia. She has a decade of experience in reproductive health, migrant health, and community and labor organizing. Alongside immigrants and youth, she worked to uphold language justice laws, increase spending in youth health programs, and implement policy change in health education in DC Public Schools. She currently leads leadership development and political education programming for domestic workers in Philadelphia. She believes that movement work needs profound joy and beauty, along with fruitful tension and conflict.
Lily Rorick
she/her
Lily is an organizer who has spent the last five years organizing with the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration and Amistad Law Project to end life without parole sentences in PA. She focuses on leadership development and base building. She grew up in Seattle in a family of seven, where she quickly learned facilitation and organizing skills. Lily’s politicization began at her public high school when students walked out to protest cuts to state education funding, and continued in college as she watched the Ferguson uprisings from afar and got involved with the local chapter of the NAACP. Lily’s commitment to abolition is rooted in her understanding that a world being built through Black-led abolitionist movements is a world with less violence and exploitation, where everyone can get the resources they need to thrive, where people are seen as people and not consumers or things.
Cara Tratner
they/them, she/her
Cara brings a decade of experience as a facilitator, organizer, and harm reduction practitioner. They live in Philadelphia where they organize at the intersection of housing justice and mass liberation. They have been working towards prison abolition in Philly for the past seven years through campaigns to shut down jails and end pretrial detention. They also like working with other white people to unlearn the trauma of supremacy and find their stake in collective liberation. Cara dreams of a world without prisons or police and a world of interdependence where we keep each other safe. They strive to embody the radical imagination, rigor, and rebellious joy it will take to get there. They love bringing music and song into movement spaces!
Diana Waters
she/her
Diana is a social justice educator, trainer and facilitator based in Philadelphia, PA. For over thirty years, Diana has facilitated, trained, and coached individuals and groups in conflict resolution, experiential education, leadership development, mediation, and principled disagreement. She believes that these skills are critical for strong, empowered organizations and communities committed to fighting for justice. Supporting people in rising to mutual power across differences is her superpower and Transformative Education and storytelling are Diana’s two loves.