Welcoming New Board Chair and Members

Our new Board Chair and members each bring a commitment and wealth of experience in community-led power building.

After nine years of service, our Board Chair Vanessa Daniel stepped off the board at the end of 2024. We want to thank Vanessa for her commitment, leadership and immense contributions in guiding CCF through its growth and leadership transition and providing her experience in intersectional grassroots organizing. We wish her success for the launch and tour of her new book, Unrig the Game: What Women of Color can Teach Everyone About Winning (Penguin Random House, 2025). 

We welcome Chandra Alexandre (she/her), CEO of Community Action Marin, as our new board chair. Her impressive background in both the public and private sectors, along with her fundraising and development expertise, as well as her engagement in policy and various social justice issues on local, national, and global levels, will bring immense value to CCF’s next chapter. “I look forward to the work ahead during this critical time. CCF’s mission to mobilize resources for grassroots-led movements across the country, serving as an anchor for power building, is exactly what democracy needs.”

We are also excited to welcome Dawn Phillips and Joanne Sandler as our newest board members! Their deep expertise from their fields and a core commitment to community-led power building will be invaluable in guiding our work ahead.

We are honored to have Dawn and Joanne’s expertise on our board as we continue our mission to resource social justice movements. Please read more below and join us in extending a warm welcome to Dawn and Joanne!

Dawn Phillips (he/they) has been a grassroots organizer engaged in a range of social, economic, racial and environmental justice organizations and fights in the Bay Area and nationally for over 20 years. Prior to joining RTTC, Dawn was the Program Director at Causa Justa::Just Cause (CJJC) a grassroots membership organization focused on community development, housing, and immigrant justice issues in the California Bay Area; and a founding member of the Right To The City Alliance. Additionally, Dawn has served as Executive Director of People United from a Better Oakland and as the Organizing Director for Building Opportunities for Self- Sufficiency (BOSS). 

Dawn has helped develop and lead local, regional, statewide and national campaigns, participated and led numerous coalitions and movement formations and authored several nationally recognized reports and articles on topics ranging from equitable development, land and housing justice, grassroots organizing, movement building and strategy. Dawn was lead author on CJJC’s report “Development Without Displacement: Resisting Gentrification in the Bay Area” which discussed the impacts of gentrification and displacement on working class communities of color and included policy recommendations for addressing these issues. Dawn is an immigrant from Singapore and a male-identified transgender person based in Oakland, California.

Joanne Sandler (she/her) has been working to strengthen women’s rights, gender justice, and organizational change strategies in the U.S. and transnationally for more than 40 years. She is a Senior Associate of Gender at Work, a global network of consultants who support organizations to build cultures of equality. Between 2001 and 2010, Joanne was Deputy Executive Director for the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM). She was on the transition team for the creation of UN Women, and then served on its first Global Civil Society Advisory Group. She is currently on the Board of Directors of Sisterhood Salaam Shalom and of UHAI-USA. She is also co-author of the book, “Gender at Work: Theory and Practice for 21st Century Organizations” (Routledge Press, 2015).