Board of Directors

Nikhil Aziz
Cynthia Bargar
Robin Carton
Leila Farsakh
Omar Henriquez
Becca Howes-Mischel
Catherine Joseph
Sophia Kim
Kay Mathew
Amanda Matos-Gonzalez
Yafreisy Mejia
Marc S. Miller
Carmen Rau
Carol Schachet
Camilo Viveiros

Staff

Robin Carton, Director of Grants and Finances
Yafreisy Mejia, Grant and Finance Associate
Carol Schachet, Director of Development and Communications

Nikhil Aziz is Executive Director of Grassroots International (GRI), a human rights and international development organization that promotes global justice through partnerships with social change organizations through grantmaking, education and advocacy. Before joining GRI, Nikhil was Associate Director at Political Research Associates (PRA), where he led a team that studied the conservative movement and the political right in the United States. Nikhil previously taught human rights and international development at colleges in Colorado and Illinois. As a gay, progressive, immigrant person of color, Nikhil has built collaborations with progressive activist and advocacy organizations nationwide and continues to speak, teach, and write on human rights, international development, and social change. In addition to sitting on the board of RESIST, he is a board member of the Massachusetts Asians and Pacific Islanders for Health and the Denver-based Africa Today Associates.

Cynthia Bargar has been a fundraiser for many years. In the 1960s, as a college student and activist, Cynthia became interested in media radicalism and studied television production in graduate school. In the early 1970s at Urban Planning Aid while fighting to ensure public access in the then-new cable TV industry, she worked with tenant groups, health and safety organizers, women's organizations, prisoners' rights groups, and daycare activists in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville, helping them make videos about their work. Almost 30 years later, she is still raising money and, as a consultant, feels privileged to work with so many excellent groups and organizations doing social change work. A writer who seems to be making a shift from short stories to poetry, Cynthia is always trying to find more time to write.

Robin Carton (Robinc@resistinc.org), both a staff and a Board member of RESIST, has a background in both grassroots political organizing and law. For 10 years she worked in the fields of child care and education, focusing on working conditions for staff and economic justice issues. Robin was also a litigator involved in civil rights and employment law struggles. In 1995, Robin joined the staff of RESIST as the Grant and Fiscal Manager. She has been a Commissioner on the Somerville Human Rights Commission, a Board member of the Boston Women's Fund, and the Open Center for Children. In addition to her work with RESIST, Robin teaches graduate seminars for Wheelock College on financial and legal management issues in child care.

Leila Farsakh is a Palestinian political economist, and presently an Associate Professor in political science at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. She holds a PhD from the University of London, and a M-philosophy from the University of Cambridge in the UK. She has worked with a number of organizations, including the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in Paris (1993-1996) and the Palestine Economic Policy Research Institute in Ramallah (1998-1999). She has published various articles and studies on issues related to the Palestinian economy and the Oslo Process, international migration and regional integration. She has also been active in a number of grassroots organizations, including the Boston Committee for Palestinian Rights, which she helped to found in 2000 and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee's Massachusetts chapter. In 2001 she won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge, MA Peace Commission. Her Book, Palestinian Labor Migration, has been published by Routledge Press in fall 2005.

Omar Henriquez served until recently as the Immigration Campaign Coordinator for the Service Employees International Union, SEIU Eastern Region. Before joining SEIU, Omar was the Youth and Immigrant Project coordinator for the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (NYCOSH). Omar has provided testimony on behalf of immigrant workers in both the Senate and the House. Omar traces his involvement in immigrant labor issues to the Workplace Project, an immigrant workers' organization in Hempstead, Long Island, NY, where he worked as the project's first organizer. Omar was born in Central America and proudly states that he remained undocumented for two decades.

Becca Howes-Mischel is currently pursuing a doctorate in Cultural Anthropology at NYU where she examines the social, political, and religious impacts of prenatal technologies in the United States and Mexico. Her political consciousness was shaped from an early age by her parents' involvement in progressive politics through the 1970s- she spent her childhood at various demonstrations protesting US involvement in Central America. As a high school student in Los Angeles she became involved in multiracial student oppositions to California's racist propositions 187 and 209. In recent years her primary activism has been in the realm of reproductive rights, including sexual health education, sexual assault counseling, and abortion access organizing. When not making trouble, Becca has been a competitive swimmer and professional beach lifeguard. She dreams of dropping out of graduate school and becoming a caterer.

Catherine Joseph is the Director of the Grants Program for the Boston Women's Fund. She has served as a member of many non-profits, including the Massachusetts Black LGBT Alliance, the Community Organizing Funders Group, Alliance Against Women's Oppression, and the Women's Funding Network.

Sophia Kim is an educator and community organizer. She first became involved with RESIST when she was the coordinator of the Coalition for Asian Pacific American Youth (CAPAY), a RESIST grant recipient. Sophia is the Project Coordinator of the Youth Action Initiative of The Medical Foundation.

Kay Mathew works at City Life/Vida Urbana, a grassroots tenant organizing and affordable housing advocacy group in Boston. Over the past 15 years, Kay has worked for community organizing efforts in Boston, including organizing public school parents through Parents United for Child Care and Allston Brighton Healthy Boston Coalition. She has been active with other grassroots groups in Boston, including Proyecto Vida, Hawthorne Youth & Community Center and Spontaneous Celebrations, the creators of Wake Up the Earth. Kay joined the RESIST Board in 1996. Now, along with tenants' rights, Kay's work as a community activist focuses on out-of-control development's negative impact on the urban environment. Kay is a single mother of two teenagers.

Amanda Matos-Gonzalez is a native of lower Roxbury, and has been active in community organizing and youth empowerment in the Boston area. A former member of the Young Sisters for Justice Program at the Boston Women's Fund, Amanda brings experience in grants allocation and leadership development, feminism and social justice work. Amanda's ethnic background is Puerto Rican and Dominican. Amanda attends the University of Massachusetts-Boston. Her interests include dance, performing arts, good food and public speaking.

Yafreisy Mejia (Yafreisy@resistinc.org) is the Grants Associate/Office Manager at RESIST. Originally from the Dominican Republic, Yafreisy comes to RESIST with experience in progressive philanthropy. She worked previously at the Boston Women's Fund where her main area of responsibility was working with the Grants department and Program department, specifically in the Young Sisters for Justice program. Most of her social justice work has focused on women's leadership development as well as youth empowerment. Yafreisy loves to dance (and is good at it), loves to travel, is a true epicurean at heart, and is a proud new mom.

Marc S. Miller joined the RESIST Board in 1995 and has known about and supported RESIST since its founding. He joined the Board because he felt that the type of funding RESIST offered was crucial to grassroots activism. Part of his political efforts over the years have been through his work as a writer and editor, particularly the eight years he was at Southern Exposure magazine and its publisher, the Institute for Southern Studies, which grew out of the Civil Rights Movement. Marc now works in Boston at Jobs for the Future, a nonprofit that seeks to increase economic opportunity through innovative approaches to education and workforce development. Outside of working hours, almost all of his non-RESIST waking hours are devoted to his real passion: theater.

Carmen Rau is the Executive Director of Holding Our Own in Albany, NY. She helped create and implement Project ¡Sano!, a health, wellness and advocacy program for LGBT people of color in New York's State Capital District, and has served as a development director and consultant for numerous non-profit organizations.

Carol Schachet (Carols@resistinc.org)joined RESIST as a staff and Board member in 1995. Prior to working for RESIST, Carol spent her time working as a community organizer with ACORN in Boston and New York, and with Sojourners Magazine and community in Washington, DC, as well as serving as the National Grassroots Coordinator at Witness for Peace. Between her years as an organizer and working with RESIST, Carol earned a Masters of Divinity, concentrating on the intersections of politics and theology. Carol plays softball, flag football and volleyball, occasionally runs marathons (very slowly), and daydreams of SCUBA diving in tropical waters.

Camilo Vivieros currently works in public health in the New Bedford area of Massachusetts. Born to immigrant parents, Camilo was raised in the closely-knit Portuguese community of Fall River. He has been involved in work for social justice for virtually his whole life. He has a long background in tenant organizing and gained national media exposure in 2004 when he and other activists were arrested during demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, PA. (He and the Timoney Three were acquitted of all charges.)