Board members

Maria Echaveste is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a co-founder of the Nueva Vista Group. She served as Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff to Bill Clinton from 1998-2001, managing domestic policy initiatives on education, civil rights, immigration and bankruptcy reform. From 1993-1997 Echaveste was the administrator of the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor.

Lisa Abbott is Director of Organizing and Leadership Development of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth. She received a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the University of Maryland in 2001. Lisa Abbott was also a Program Associate at the Grassroots Policy Project in Washington DC from 1999-2000. She serves on the board of the Progressive Technology Project in Minneapolis, and was recently elected to the policy-making board of the local elementary school of her two children.

Anthony Thigpenn has been involved in neighborhood organizing and public policy advocacy for 30 years. He is the founder and president of Strategic Concepts in Organizing & Policy Education (SCOPE), a social justice organization based in South Los Angeles. Mr. Thigpen also founded the Alliance of Local Leadership for Education, Registration, and Turnout (ALLERT), a community/labor coalition. He currently leads California Calls, an alliance of 31 organizations in 11 key counties working to win an economic justice agenda for all Californians.

Brenda Hyde is the Assistant Director of Southern Echo, a training and education organization working to build strong grassroots leadership and organizations in Mississippi and throughout the southern region.

Don Hazen is executive director of the Independent Media Institute and executive editor of AlterNet. The former publisher of Mother Jones magazine, he has edited several books, including, most recently, Start Making Sense: Turning the Lessons of Election 2004 into Winning Progressive Politics. Don conceived of and organized the two Media & Democracy Congresses that took place in San Francisco and New York City in 1997 and 1998, and has managed political campaigns in New York City for Ruth Messinger and David Dinkins. He holds an MA in counseling from the University of Massachusetts and a BA in politics from Princeton University.

Kent Wong is director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education,
where he teaches Labor Studies and Asian American Studies. He previously was
staff attorney for the Service Employees International Union in Los Angeles .
Kent has also served as national president of the Asian Pacific American Labor
Alliance, and the United Association for Labor Education.

Peggy Saika is the President/Executive Director of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP). From 1993 to 2000, Ms. Saika was the founding executive director of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and from 1983 to 1991 the executive director of the Asian Law Caucus. Spanning a 30-year period of community involvement and leadership in philanthropy, she helped to create and direct non-profit organizations in Sacramento, California and New York City.

Don Galante is Managing Partner and founder of Gala Capital Management LLC. Previously, Don served as the COO and executive vice president at Mizuho Securities USA.  He has extensive trading and management experience in the global fixed income markets.  Over the course of his career he has established highly successful finance and arbitrage trading operations at Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, Barclays Bank, and Citicorp.

Mr. Galante has served on the Trading Practices Committee for the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association as well as on multiple advisory committees representing the Futures Industry Association.