Windcall Institute Board

Common Counsel Foundation is the fiscal sponsor of Windcall. However, the Windcall Board functions in every other way as the governing body of Windcall.

Elsa Barboza • SCOPE/AGENDA • Los Angeles, CA

Dothula Baron-Hall • Consultant • Warsaw, NC

Margi Clarke • Consultant to grassroots organizations • Berkeley, CA

Bob Fulkerson • Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada • Reno, NV

Sue Hutchinson •  Student, California Institute for Integral Studies • Oakland, CA

Rev. Mac Legerton (Treasurer) • Center for Community Action • Lumberton, NC

Kamau Marcharia (Co-Chair) •  Fairfield County Council Vice-Chairman, South Carolina Progressive Network •  Jenkinsville, SC

Donna Parson • Demos • New York, NY

Deepak Pateriya (Co-Chair) • United Food and Commercial Workers • Oakland, CA

Joy Persall • Native Americans in Philanthropy • Minneapolis, MN

Elsa Barboza

Elsa Barboza has spent the last fifteen years fighting for social justice through the building of a grassroots South Los Angeles organization, AGENDA and a community institution SCOPE, a social justice organization focused on alleviating poverty in low-income and working class communities of color.  She has led grassroots regional jobs campaigns resulting in the creation of Healthcare training that links low-income communities to good-paying healthcare careers and welfare mothers to model training & placement for public sector jobs.  At the heart of her work, she helped to organize & develop a Black and Latino membership base in South Los Angeles and in other inner-city neighborhoods.  She is currently the Campaign Director working with ally organizations, and helping to train grassroots community leaders and staff on strategy, tactics and political analysis.  Elsa has tremendous organizing experience and over the years has served as a South LA organizer, the Echo Park Community Organizer, the Welfare Campaign Lead Organizer and the Organizing Coordinator positions at SCOPE.  Elsa also has electoral organizing experience that began in 1992 when she did neighborhood organizing, civic participation and electoral education with Los Angeles Jobs With Peace.  Elsa has activism training from the CTWO MAAP Program, CTWO Mentorship Program and as a student of color at the University Of Michigan. She was a Windcall Resident in 2006.

Dothula Baron-Hall

Dothula Baron-Hall has worked in communities for over thirty years to empower individuals and families, socially, economically and environmentally. Her primary focus has been on working with families to improve the quality of their lives and thus develop tools for overcoming life’s constant challenges. In 2002, Dothula founded the Rural Empowerment Association for Community Help (REACH) in Duplin County. Since its founding, the agency’s work has expanded to address environmental problems in Duplin, Bladen and Sampson counties. In 2005, REACH was awarded an EPA Environmental Justice Small Grant, and in 2007, a Collaborative Problem Solving Grant to address public health concerns connected to waste disposal from industrial hog operations. A native of Winston-Salem, NC, Dothula has a B.A.degree from North Carolina Central University in Durham, an M.S. from the University of Maryland College Park, and an M.A. in Conflict Resolution from Columbia College in South Carolina. She was a Windcall Resident in 2001.

Margi Clarke

Margi Clarke's work history includes 25 years as an organizer and fundraiser for Central American solidarity and human rights, women's development, immigrant rights and environmental justice.  Margi is bilingual Spanish-English and has traveled widely in Latin America.  For the last 8 years, she has worked as an independent consultant to grassroots community organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.  She is a mother, yoga practitioner, neighborhood activist and cancer survivor.  She was a Windcall Resident in 2004.

Bob Fulkerson

Bob Fulkerson is the Executive Director and co-founder of PLAN.  He worked as Executive Director of Citizen Alert, a statewide grassroots conservation organization, from1984 to 1994.  He is currently adjunct faculty at the UNR School of Social Work, teaching classes on oppression and privilege. A fifth-generation Nevadan, Bob served on the staff of Senator Paul Laxalt while attending George Washington University. He has played a key role in the formation of several social change organizations in Nevada, and serves on the boards of the Windcall Institute, High Country News and The Note Ables, a performing arts group for the disabled. He is a graduate of the Rockwood year-long leadership program and a recipient of the “Leadership for A Changing World” Award from the Ford Foundation.  In addition to his work, Bob’s premier loves are his life partner and family, yoga, and trout streams in the high desert mountains of Nevada. He was a Windcall resident in 1997.

Sue Hutchinson

Sue Hutchinson started some 25 years ago as a social justice activist around women’s, U.S. imperialism, and racial justice issues – and evolved into becoming a grassroots community organizer in low-income, racially diverse communities for more than 12 years.  She was an intern at the Center for Third World Organizing and went on to be a community organizer with ACORN for 10 years in Chicago, Detroit, Brooklyn, Minneapolis and Salinas.  She helped Californians for Justice get started in 1995, and from 1997 until 2008, she worked as a program officer with the Common Counsel Foundation, a nonprofit that assists progressive family foundations in strategic social change grant-making and which manages two retreat programs, one for writers, and the other, Windcall, a contemplative and healing retreat program for social change organizers and activists.  Sue worked as the primary coordinator for Windcall outreach and selection of residents.  She found her work with Windcall to be deeply moving and rewarding, as she witnessed so many lives transformed, that she is now serving on the Board of the Windcall Institute.  Sue is currently a full-time student at the California Institute of Integral Studies in the Master’s Program of Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness, where she is studying with Richard Tarnas, Joanna Macy, and Brian Swimme to look at the big picture of the evolution of consciousness as it relates to the environmental crisis and social change at this very important moment in history. Sue was a Windcall resident in 2006.

Rev. Mac Legerton

Mac Legerton is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Center For Community Action (CCA) in Robeson County, N.C. where he has worked for the last 29 years. Garnered with the mission to improve the quality and equality of life in the most ethnically diverse, rural county in the United States, Mac has led and partnered in highly successful, social justice and sustainable development projects and developed one of the oldest community and regional based, multiracial social justice organizations in North Carolina and the South.  In recognition of his model work in rural development and social justice, Legerton received the 2007 Distinguished Service to Rural Life Award from the Rural Sociological Society. He is a practicing contemplative and ordained minister in the Southern Conference of the United Church of Christ. He is a member and leader in the national Guild for Spiritual Guidance. Mac has an MA in Education and Theological Studies from Union Theological Seminary in New York and completed coursework in the EdD Program at Columbia University, Teachers College. Legerton also directs CCA’s new Institute on Sustainable Development, Social Justice, and Transformative Learning that includes residential programs for undergraduate and graduate students from across the nation and assistance with undergraduate and graduate projects in these areas. He serves on numerous committees and boards on the local, state, and national level, including the Windcall Institute. He was a Windcall Resident in 1990.

Kamau Marcharia

For thirty years, Kamau Marcharia has taken the lead in organizing marginalized communities – from prisoners in the Northeast to low-income African-Americans in the South.  He was Executive Director of Fairfield United Action (1986 – 1990) during which time the organization won total reform of the county’s grand jury selection procedures, which had systemically discriminated against African-Americans. Kamau also initiated a project to bring running water to unserved areas of the county.  He was Director of Rural Organizing for Grassroots Leadership (1990-2006) and worked with many groups in the South.  He has served as a board member for the Bert and Mary Meyer Foundation and Southern Partners Fund, the National Organizers Alliance and the Windcall Institute.  He has also served as a member of the Nominating committee for the Petra Foundation and the Criminal Justice Task Force of the American Friends Service committee. He is the past President of the Fairfield County NAACP.

In 1998, Kamau was elected to serve as County Council Representative for District 4 in Fairfield County, South Carolina and has now served on Fairfield County Council for almost ten years. He is currently serving in second term as Vice Chairman and serves as chairman of the Public Facilities and Transportation Committee, and member of the Environment and Public Safety Committee and Economic Development and Land Planning Committee. He is also involved with the South Carolina Progressive Network. He is the recipient of several awards: Petra Foundation Fellowship in 1991, Alston-Bannerman Fellowship in 1993, 1999 Citizen of the Year Award from the S. C. Association of Social Workers, Thunder and Lightening Award from the S. C. Progressive Network in 2002.

Donna Parson

Donna Parson is Senior Project Manager at Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action.  Donna coordinates staff activities, meetings and projects initiated by the President's office, and directs the Demos Forum: Ideas for Change events program.  She has over 25 years experience building grassroots advocacy organizations.  Donna was formerly the Director of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group and Northeast Action and the Field Director of Public Campaign.  She has also worked in the political arena directing several Congressional campaigns.  She first became involved in advocacy work when she was a young mother in rural Connecticut and she organized her neighbors to stop an environmentally destructive highway.  She went on to work for the Sierra Club and, eventually, for the Connecticut Citizen Action Group.  She was a Windcall Resident in 2002.

Deepak Pateriya

Deepak Pateriya is Organizing Coordinator for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Prior to joining the UFCW, Deepak was on the international staff of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), as part of the union’s Capital Stewardship team. In this role, Deepak worked with SEIU members, leaders and staff to ensure that members’ pension funds promote responsible corporate practices by the companies they’re invested in, including when workers at those companies are organizing to form a union. Previously, Deepak did organizing and political work for SEIU Local 1877, the union for janitors and other property services workers across California. From 1995 to 2003, Deepak was on staff at AGENDA/SCOPE; during those years, he worked as an organizer, a lead organizer, an electoral campaigner, and also as director of AGENDA/SCOPE’s training program that provided political education and strategic capacity building programs to grassroots organizations around the country. Deepak’s first full-time paid organizing job was on the national staff of the U.S. Student Association from 1991 to 1994. He was a Windcall Resident in 2002.

Joy Persall

Joy Persall is the Executive Director of Native Americans in Philanthropy, which serves Native communities, Native leaders, nonprofits and the organized field of philanthropy and is the only organization whose primary purpose is to advocate on behalf of Native people in the philanthropic sector.  Joy speaks nationally on issues of philanthropy, self-determination and sovereignty. Previously the Associate Director of The Headwaters Foundation for Justice, she brings leadership experience in innovative community based grant-making programs. Joy was instrumental in the expansion of Fund of the Sacred Circle, and chaired a $2 million endowment campaign for the fund that supports Native American social justice projects in Minnesota and Wisconsin. In addition, she directed the Capacity Building program at Headwaters that provided technical assistance resources for grassroots organizations, and served as a bridge between the grassroots and philanthropic communities.

Joy is a graduate of the Emerging Philanthropic Leaders Fellowship of the National Council of Foundations, served on the Board of Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action, The Funding Exchange, National Network of Grantmakers, Changemakers Program Committee, and Third Millennium Philanthropy & Leadership Initiative of The Center on Philanthropy, currently serving on Indiana University’s Board of Visitors.  Persall is also the Board Chair of Minnesota Indian Women’s Resource Center, serves on the board of Charities Review Council and NACDI (Native American Community Development Institute).

Joy is Ontario Aniishinabe - French Canadian, mother, grandmother, and has committed her work and life to raising awareness of issues of diversity and inclusion and working for justice and equity. She was a Windcall Resident in 2001.

Advisory Board

Stuart Acuff • 1999 • AFL-CIO, Organizing Director • Washington, DC
Carl Anthony • 1992 • Ford Foundation • New York, NY
Fran Barrett • 1997 • Community Resource Exchange • New York, NY
Maria Blanco • 1996 • Warren Institute on Race, Ethnicity & Diversity • Berkeley, CA
Linda Burnham • 1992 • Non-profit consultant • Oakland, CA
Pamela Chiang • 2000 • Center for Community Change • Belgrade, MT
Walter Davis • 1998 • Southern Empowerment Project • Maryville, TN
Scott Douglas • 2001 • Greater Birmingham Ministries • Birmingham, AL
Emily Goldfarb • 1994 • Nonprofit consultant • San Francisco, CA
LeeAnn Hall • 1997 • Northwest Federation of Community Organizations • Seattle, WA
Taj James • 2001 • Movement Strategy Center • Oakland, CA
Madeline Janis-Aparicio • 1997 • LA Alliance for a New Economy • Los Angeles, CA
Sandra Jerabek • 1994 • Redwood Economic Development Institute • Crescent City, CA
Anthony Van Jones • 2000 • White House Council on Environmental Quality • Washington, DC
Burt Lauderdale • 2000 • Kentuckians for the Commonwealth • London, KY
David Mann • 1997 • Nonprofit consultant • Minneapolis, MN
Rev. David Ostendorf • 1991 • Center for New Community • Ellsworth, WI
Millard Mitty Owens • 1997 • New York University, New York, NY
Julie Quiroz-Martinez • 1994 • mosaic consulting • Oakland, CA
Rosi Reyes • 2001 • Nonprofit consultant • San Francisco, CA
Janet Robideau • 2001 • Montana People's Action • Missoula, MT
Andy Robinson • 2005 • Nonprofit Consultant • Plainfield, VT
Gary Sandusky • 1990 • Center for Community Change • Boise, ID
Rinku Sen • 2000 • Applied Research Center • New York, NY
Jim Sessions • 1999 • former director, Highlander Center & the Union Community Fund • Knoxville, TN
Nina Shapiro-Perl • 2004 • Service Employees International Union (SEIU) • Washington, DC
Esmeralda Simmons • 2000 • Center for Law & Social Justice • Brooklyn, NY
Arturo Vargas • 1992 • National Association of Latino Elected Officials • Los Angeles, CA
Carol Prejean Zippert • 1992 • Society of Folk Arts & Culture • Eutaw, AL