Leadership & Staff

EXECUTIVE BOARD (BOARD OF DIRECTORS)

Richard Rogers, Chair
Executive Secretary-Treasurer, Greater Boston Labor Council

Noemi Ramos, Treasurer
Executive Director, New England United for Justice

Tom Callahan, Clerk
Executive Director, Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance

Jim Brooks
Tenant Organizer, City Life/Vida Urbana

Enid Eckstein
Vice President, 1199SEIU Massachusetts - United Healthcare Workers East

Tom Flynn
Political Director, New England Regional Council of Carpenters

Jovanna Garcia Soto
Green Space Organizer, Chelsea Collaborative

Marcus Johnson
Leader, SEIU Local 615

John Laughlin
Political Director, International Union of Painters and Allied Trades District Council 35

Warren Pepicelli
Manager/Vice President, New England Joint Board, UNITE HERE

Khalida Smalls
Organizing Director, Alternatives for Community and Environment

STAFF

Diana Bell
Organizer

Diana has worked extensively for mmigrant rights and was on the staff of MIRA (the Mass. Immigration and Refugee Assistance coalition). She also worked with SEIU Local 615 and City Life/Vida Urbana.

Lisa Clauson
Co-Director

Lisa founded CLU in 2004 in collaboration with the Greater Boston Labor Council, local unions and community organizations. Lisa has eighteen years of organizing experience. She began as a neighborhood organizer for Chicago ACORN and later became Head Organizer for Massachusetts ACORN. During her tenure at Massachusetts ACORN, Lisa dramatically increased the staff and budget of the organization and expanded ACORN's organizing to new communities in Boston and to three other cities around the state. Under her direction, successful organizing campaigns were conducted, winning Boston's Living Wage Ordinance, increasing the state minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit, and winning one of the strongest state anti-predatory lending bills in the country. 

Darlene Lombos
Co-Director

Darlene started with CLU in 2006 as a Senior Organizer and then became our Organizing Director before becoming a Co-Director of the organization in 2008.  Darlene has been organizing around various community issues since 1996, including police accountability and home daycare justice at Direct Action for Rights and Equality in Providence, RI as well as transportation equity, gentrification and displacement, and education reform at Sisters in Action for Power in Portland, OR. Darlene spent 2005 volunteering for GABRIELA in the Philippines and for the MST (Landless Workers Movement) in Brazil. She brings thirteen years' experience in community and youth organizing, leadership development and coalition-building to this work. Darlene is Filipina and speaks Tagalog and Portuguese.

Mary Jo Connelly
Research Director

Research Director Mary Jo Connelly has been an educator, organizer, researcher and activist for twenty-five years and has worked for CLU since 2005. She previously carried out research on economic and workforce development at the Labor Resource Center, UMass Boston and with unions and community organizations. She has also carried out community-based and participatory research. Mary Jo completed a Master's in Education and advanced graduate study at UMass Amherst. She has served as an elected union officer and a Board member of several community organizations. Mary Jo lives in Somerville with her partner and two children, ages 5 and 12.

Soledad Boyd
Senior Organizer

Soledad is a senior organizer at Community Labor United and joined CLU’s staff in 2009. Soledad came to CLU from City Life/Vida Urbana where she began her organizing work eight years ago as a tenant organizer organizing low income and working class tenants of color. During her time at City Life, Soledad organized tenants in their struggle against rent increases and poor living conditions as well as their fight for respect from landlords. She organized tenants to bargain collectively and sign collective contracts with landlords. She mobilized the tenants living in Jamaica Plain Apartments to participate in a successful eviction blockade in support of one of their neighbors. Soledad also helped form CL/VU's Bank Tenant Association, which protects tenants and former homeowners from bank evictions. She assisted many tenants in housing courts and often was asked to speak on behalf of them before the Supreme Judicial Court. Soledad went on to mobilize tenants and former owners living in foreclosed properties against post foreclosure evictions. These efforts led to a city ordinance protecting tenants living in foreclosed properties.

Jeremy Shenk
Senior Organizer

Jeremy comes to Commuity Labor United from the Service Employees International Union local 615 where he was the community organizer. Among other things he built community support for a campaign of almost 1500 security officers  who protect buildings in downtown Boston, Back Bay, and Cambridge to first form a union and then get a first union contract that had affordable high quality healthcare, significant wage increases, and other benefits for the first time. Jeremy strongly believes in building long-term relationships between community organizations and unions through joint campaigns and struggling together. He was raised in Virginia and lived and orgnaized for five years with the United Steelworkers and the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh PA before relocating to Boston in 2007. When not organizing he spends his time chasing after his energetic wild two-and-a-half year old son.

Mike Prokosch
Communications and Training

Mike Prokosch joined CLU's staff in 2009. Mike has worked as a graphic artist, community newspaper editor, and organizer in the Vietnam, Central America, and Iraq antiwar/solidarity movements. For the past ten years he has led popular economics trainings for unions and community groups through United for a Fair Economy and the UMass Lowell Labor Extension Program.

STRATEGY COMMITTEE

Alternatives for Community & Environment (ACE)

Boston Teachers Union (BTU)

New England Regional Council of Carpenters