Meet the 2011 New Organizing Institute Fellows

The New Organizing Institute Fellowship is a, full-time, paid fellowship that is a partnership between the New Organizing Institute, MoveOn.org, Rebuild the Dream, ColorOfChange, and Citizen Engagement Lab (CEL).  Through the six-month fellowship, participants will gain a whole new range of organizing skills, from online campaigning to field actions to political strategy. The fellows will put these skills to work as staff members of their host organizations, fighting the good fight at the highest levels of American politics.

We are excited to welcome our first class of fellows!

Jedidjah de Vries (MoveOn.org)
Jedidjah spent part of his childhood in Israel, where he learned that politics matters. That is why he has been involved in political organizing in one form or another since his high school years in Southern California. After running for school board and taking on a leadership role in the student anti-war movement he went to work for the nuclear disarmament movement. He recently completed his Masters in Social Theory and Public Affairs at the University of Amsterdam, and now resides in Lompoc, CA.

Jordan Haedtler (Citizen Engagement Lab)
Jordan is excited to be organizing around the issue of climate change with the Citizen Engagement Laboratory. Jordan's experience with climate change advocacy began at UC Santa Barbara, where he headed up CALPIRG's campaign to pass renewable electricity standards through Congress. While at UCSB, Jordan also worked to elect an environmental advocate to an open County Supervisor seat, and joined over 50 UC students on a statewide earned media tour to promote high speed rail in California. Jordan has years of experience working on grassroots campaigns and with non-profits. He has worked on a wide array of issues, ranging from fighting unjust prison sentence guidelines to bringing greater transparency to Oakland School Board decisions. Last fall, Jordan managed a state legislative race in Southeastern Pennsylvania, selected by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee as one of "40 Essential Races" nationwide. When he's not organizing, Jordan can be found singing barbershop harmony with competitive quartets and choruses.

Sandra Khalifa (Rebuild the Dream)
Sandra just graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in History and a focus on race and immigration in urban America. Upon graduating, she completed a thesis on federal and local housing policies in West Oakland during the 1950s and 1960s, studying how those policies intersected with race, class, and the Black Panther Party in Oakland. That research inspired her to commit to social justice causes. Over the summer Sandra worked at Campus Progress, the youth division of Center for American Progress, as an advocacy intern. At Campus Progress she did work on immigration policy and voter ID laws. When she came home to Southern California in August, she interned for the millennial division of Rebuild the Dream. 

Sonia Khan (MoveOn.org)
Sonia started organizing as a student at Berkeley. Outraged by proposals to increase tuition and eliminate vital University of California programs, she helped rally thousands of Berkeley and UC students to stand up for public education.
Shortly after graduating, Sonia moved to Las Vegas to re-elect Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. She became a top organizer in Nevada, managing the field operation for a conservative-leaning Assembly District and mobilizing the growing Asian American Pacific Islander community.  Sonia has interned for Congresswoman Grace Napolitano and for the Senate Majority Leader at the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Center.
Sonia was born and raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles. As the daughter of a German mother and an Indian father, Sonia appreciates industriousness and vibrant cultures - not to mention good curry and a cold, crisp Hefeweizen (preferably at the same time). Sonia graduated from the New Organizing Institute's New Media BootCamp in July of 2011 and currently resides in the diverse Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, DC. 

Bhavik Lathia (MoveOn.org)
Bhavik spent the first six years of his life in Kolkata, India, which played a huge role in shaping his politics and identity. There, he was surrounded by the stark consequences of workers without rights, children without education, families without healthcare and an environment without even the most basic protections. As a result, progressive change has been intertwined with Bhavik's goals and aspirations since childhood.
Bhavik started organizing in high school, where he founded One Small Step. The goals of this organization were to raise awareness about disenfranchised communities and raise funds on their behalf. At the University of Michigan, he founded a coalition of social justice-oriented student groups called the Progressive Alliance, and went on to establish the Michigan Social Justice Conference. Last year, he joined U of M's Spectrum Center - the campus LGBTQ resource office - and was a core planner for the Midwest BLGTA College Conference. Bhavik recently graduated with Bachelors from the Ford School of Public Policy.

Ryan Morgan (MoveOn.org)
Ryan is originally from Montgomery, Alabama, but he studied Political Science and Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. After graduating, he spent a year in France before moving to D.C., and now he wouldn't want to live anywhere else.  He is a huge fan of Alabama football and UNC basketball (both of his teams won National Championships while in college), and he plays Team Handball, a European sport that's like soccer, but uses hands. 

C.C. Song (Rebuild the Dream)
C.C. was born in Taipei, Taiwan, and came to the U.S. when she was 14.  Since then, she's seen the landscapes of Northeast Tri-State; Atlanta, GA; northern and southern California; and the Midwest.  A proud graduate of the University of Michigan, C.C. developed her passion for empowering diverse communities to push for progressive social change in college.  She was a Sadie Nash Leadership Project (SNLP) summer institute dean in Newark, NJ, and also received a fellowship from SNLP to organize a 10-week program on Asian American history and food for New York City high school students.  She was a project coordinator at NYPIRG, and most recently completed a fellowship at The Greenlining Institute, where she focused on making energy and environmental policies more inclusive of communities of color.  One day, C.C. hopes to revise the novel she wrote in college.  She enjoys jogging, cooking, growing vegetables on her Los Angeles apartment balcony, and karaoke.

Monique Hairston (Rebuild the Dream)
Monique is social entrepreneur committed to bringing about social and economic equity. Monique graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia with a Bachelor of Journalism in Broadcast Journalism and Strategic Communications. After graduating, she worked as a Production and Activism Intern for WGNU radio where she organized anti-profiling and education reform campaigns in St. Louis. Monique worked as an Assignment Editor and Producer in local news in Houston for several years before moving to the Philippines in 2005 to write for a film production company.
Along with her colleague, Monique started a program for inner-city female youth in the Los Angeles area.  The program provides workshops and events that help build self-esteem, critical thinking and community activism and leadership skills. 
In 2009, Monique began studying and working in Permaculture and natural building in California and Costa Rica. For the past year she has coordinated and organized community garden projects in Afro-Ecuadorian communities in Guayaquil as well as a sustainable food, childcare and health program for an orphanage supporting children living with HIV in San Pablo, Ecuador.
Monique believes that organizing communities to become independent in the areas of organic food production, renewable energy, natural healthcare, and education will revitalize, restructure, and empower communities in the US as well as alleviate conditions of poverty and social/racial inequality.

For more information on the NOI Fellows Program, please contact Sue Chinn, NOI's Program Director, at sue@neworganizing.com