Meet the Camp Courage trainers
Lisa Powell, Lead Facilitator and Trainer, Camp Courage
Lisa has been a leader and organizer in the LGBT movement since 1987, when she first volunteered with Minority AIDS Project in Los Angeles. Two years later, she co-founded United Lesbians of African Heritage (ULOAH) and Sistahfest. Lisa fell way in love for the first time during her freshman year in college at Michigan State University, where she believes she majored in philosophy, history and economics. She earned her Juris Doctorate from UCLA School of Law and practiced civil litigation for thirteen years, during which time she never lost a jury trial. Lisa's life was transformed by working as a Deputy Field Organizer for the Obama campaign, which led her to co-found Black Lesbians United (BLU) in March 2009.
Torie Osborn, Co-Founder of Camp Courage
Torie is senior strategist at the United Way-LA. She is former Senior Advisor on poverty and homelessness to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and former executive director of Liberty Hill Foundation, The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the LA Gay
and Lesbian Center. She has been a social justice activist for over 40 years. Torie volunteered fulltime on the Obama campaign, and is mentor to and role model for countless organizers for social justice. Torie is too humble to blown her own horn, but her legions of fans will tell you that she is smart, thoughtful, giving, and shining example of someone who lives her progressive principles.
Mike Bonin, Co-Founder and Program Director of Camp Courage A veteran political staffer, Mike worked as a field organizer here in California for the Obama campaign. He learned community organizing in the 1980s as an intern for the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers, and has since worked on many campaigns, including managing the 2005 City Council campaign of Bill Rosendahl, the only LGBT elected official in Los Angeles government. Mike currently serves as Rosendahl's chief of staff, and is an active supporter of organized labor, civil rights, and social justice causes. Mike spends more time than is healthy or reasonable on Facebook.
Javier C. Angulo
Javier is a political consultant with Progressive Strategy Partners where he is currently focused on reelecting Senator Barbara Boxer in 2010 and in electing Hector de la Torre for California Insurance Commissioner. In addition to managing and volunteering in several campaigns, Javier served as Deputy Political Director for No on Prop 8. Javier has an extensive background in Latino civil rights and advocacy, including the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in DC, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), and the National Assn. of Latino Elected Officials (NALEO). Find Javier on Facebook.
Julia Rosen
Julia is the Online Political Director for the Courage Campaign. Julia got her start in politics working for Common Cause. She moved out to California to work for the Alliance for a Better California. Her background is in connecting the netroots and the labor movement to bring about progressive change. She is currently an editor at Calitics and a regular contributor to Crooks and Liars. Julia also serves as a trainer for the New Organizing Institute.
Vincent Jones
Vincent Jones began organizing in 1992 when he led the effort to keep the peace at his high school in the wake of the civil unrest following the Rodney King beating trial. He has been bringing people together to overcome challenges or achieve shared goals ever since. Currently he is a Senior Program Officer at the Liberty Hill Foundation where his major charge is to further grantmaking in the areas of Economic and Racial Justice, LGBTQ Justice, and Environmental Justice. Vincent is a veteran of several statewide and local political campaigns including U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer’s 2004 re-election, State Treasurer Phil Angelides’ winning gubernatorial primary campaign, LAUSD’s successful School Bond Measure “R”, and former LA Police Chief Bernard Parks’ mayoral bid. He also developed policy and served as a field representative for U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer and NYC Councilmember David Yassky. Vincent served as executive director of a health organization and is currently Board Co-Chair of the National Teen Leadership Program, a founding Board Member of the Jordan Rustin Coalition, and a member of Lambda Legal's Los Angeles Leadership Committee. You can follow Vincent on Twitter where he is @citizenjones76 or find him on Facebook: deondrake@yahoo.com.
Kelli Dunaway
Kelli is the Director of Attorney Recruiting & Development for Nossaman LLP. After a year spent working full-time on the Obama for America Campaign (as a Field Organizer in Texas, Indiana, and South Dakota, and as an Intern Recruiter in California), Kelli was honored with a 2009 Truman Security Fellowship, a prestigous fellowship which allows young leaders to enhance their national security policy knowledge, as well as to deepen their understanding of the progressive national security tradition. Kelli is an elected Delegate to the California Democratic Party, representing Assembly District 45, and sits on the Board of Advisors for the Los Angeles Chapter of the New Leaders Council. She received her JD from UCLA School of Law and her B.A. in History from Southern Illinois University. In her free time, Kelli volunteers as a community organizer, empowering citizens to take charge of the political process and fight for honesty and integrity in local and national government. She can be reached at kelli.dunaway@gmail.com.
Lenny Young
Lenny is a film producer and Internet entrepreneur by day, political activist by night. Having whet his appetite on the Obama campaign in Nevada as a deputy regional field director, he joined Camp Courage as a facilitator and canvass trainer in the hopes of passing on the valuable tools and techniques he learned on the campaign trail to California activists fighting for marriage equality.
Christine Marge
Christine is a social worker and activist dedicated to the on the groundwork needed to create progressive social change. She got her start in electoral organizing on the No on 54 campaign in 2003, and since then has worked on many ballot measure and candidate campaigns, including No on 8 and Obama's campaign. She worked as a community organizer in the labor movement, and now works toward systems change around housing and health care at United Way. Christine lives in Los Angeles, where she volunteers as Canvass Committee co-chair for Vote for Equality.
Fran Hutchins
Fran is a queer, progressive activist from Birmingham, Alabama. A member of the Canvass Committee of LA's Vote for Equality, she has been training volunteers to talk to voters about LGBT issues for two years. She works on issue campaigns--housing, economic justice, and marriage equality--and learned canvassing in 2006 by talking to voters in immigrant communities about Measure H, which would have created more affordable housing in Los Angeles. During the No on 8 campaign, she trained over 3000 volunteers in Los Angeles on voter identification, volunteer recruitment, and fund raising. She tweets @frantomatic.
Marta Evry
Marta makes her living as a film editor in Los Angeles for movies and television, but her real passion is community organizing. Marta worked as a volunteer Regional Organizer for the Obama campaign (alongside Mike Bonin) where she helped organize and run dozens of phone banks in her congressional district. Since then, she's founded the political blog and e-newsletter "Venice For Change" and is working closely with Organizing For America to help redirect the energy and excitement unleashed during the campaign to grassroots organizing in California.Sarah Callahan
Sarah has been involved in progressive organizing and electoral activity for the past 20 years. For the past 6 years, she has been the Political Director of United Healthcare Workers West, a union that was one of the most active, progressive and member driven organizations in the California labor community. Prior to her work with the labor movement, Sarah was the Caucus Director for the Connecticut State Senate Democrats and managed the successful election effort to restore the Democrats into the majority in 1996. In addition, she has worked in more than 100 candidate and issue campaigns at the local, state and national level. Sarah has an MA in Government Administration from the University of Pennsylvania and resides in Tiburon, CA. She is now working with the Courage Campaign and the new National Union of Healthcare Workers.
Shum Preston
Shum is a gay activist and political consultant. He began his career in a unique gay rights/electoral consulting firm run by Jim Rivaldo and Robert Barnes, where he helped elect many of San Francisco’s gay-lesbian leaders of the 1990s. Since then, Shum has worked on political and troublemaking campaigns from the local to the national level, doing campaign management, field, and press. Most recently, Shum has been an advisor to the California Nurses Association and National Nurses Organizing Committee, which is among America’s fastest-growing and most progressive unions. During that time, he’s been fortunate to experience three different marriages to one same man, and the birth of their four children. Once equality in marriage law is won, he plans to protest the institution for being patriarchal and repressive!
