Meet our Board Directors!
Pavel Uranga
Board Member
Pável has a masters degree in forensic anthropology and a vast portfolio of deep relational movement building for equity and justice. Pavel is a radio producer, community journalist, and community organizer with more than 20 years of experience working with unions, students, campesinos, and human rights organizations in several Latin American countries and the United States. His experience has allowed him to carry out individual and collective social justice initiatives, including immigrants' rights, community radio, qualitative/participatory research processes, case studies, training for leadership development and collaborative union efforts, labor, and grassroots movements. He is a cooperative business developer with our mentor, Cooperative Development Institute and we are so thankful for the weekly bi-lingual mentor-ship he provides to our worker owner teams, two of whom are Latino led! With Pavel's help, we feel much more competent in meeting our worker co-op goals in the coming year!
Javier Luengo-Garrido
Board Director
Javier, a Chilean immigrant, attorney, and Massachusetts ACLU organizing strategist, is dedicated to lifting the voices of immigrants and the working class people through legislation and policy. Javier is an active member and mentor of the Change for Miguel Coaltion and the Yes on 4 campaign. We look forward to the ways Javier can advocate and mentor us in our movement building for equitable policy and legislation.
Maria Encalada
Board Director
Maria is an extraordinary El Salvadorean immigrant woman. She steers our food security program, Mercado De Vida, and sits on O.U.R. Resurge Building committee to support it's rehab at 129 Fenn St. She is looking to how her current business, Helping Hands, can be cooperatively run and also how it can incorporate her volunteer work, cleaning and care-taking for elderly immigrants who can not pay for her services. We are so thankful to have Maria on our team!
Terry Moore
Board Director
Terry is co-founder of Rose & Cole's Transport Co=op, a worker co-op operating with Roots & Dreams as fiduciary. Along with Rose & Cole team members, he is steering it's MA in-statement as a co-op LLC. Terry is extremely talented in many different trades from carpentry to masonry. He sits on the steering board for O.U.R. Resurge Community Owned Building at 129 Fenn St, and is directing it's rehab so that it can serve as a community owned and run hub. We are so thankful to have his expertise and direction on these two projects!
Michael HItchcock
Board Director
Co-founder of Roots, Michael serves with our MA statewide organizing team COWOP, which aims to underwrite and mobilize for policy that supports worker co-ops and co-op housing vía technical assistance and direct capital. He serves on the GARE (Grant government alliance on racial equity) board for Western MA to better raise the voices of our worker co-op team members who largely belong to impoverished and/or marginalized communities.
Michael comes from a labor background working internationally on farms but loves the strategy side of development and has supported the build out of an NYC catering company while living in Brooklyn, NY.
As a laborer working in catering for Amherst College, Michael became heavily involved in workers rights, especially after the pandemic hit, and his team was being forced into COVID dorms without proper gear. While Michael left Amherst College in 2021 to support the development of one of our local worker co-op teams, Rose & Cole’s Transport, he continues to serve on the Amherst Labor Alliance Board to increase pay and better working conditions for the average dining hall worker at Amherst College. His role on the Constitution committee advocates for language that will be inclusive of and scalable to other workers within the college, other workers within the five college system, and then other workers whose businesses depend on the college for their income.
Michael's goal as apart of Roots & Dreams is to empower the working class and increase the ownership and control of our government, national resources, and economy by whatever levers we can find. We are so thankful for his solid commitment and weekly volunteer hours that move our vision forward!
Anaelisa Jacobsen
Board Director
Anaelisa has served our community these last 25 years as dedicated Director of Manos Unidas Cooperative, a grassroots member organization that provides social support, resources, and advocacy for our most under-heard community members by means of a mutual aid network that lifts up the lifts up vulnerable members voices through a popular education model. As a member organization that shares the same EIN as ourselves, our collaboration with Manos Unidas in critical community development initiatives strengthens members involved in either economic or community development projects. Anaelisa was the forerunner for cooperative economy ideas as a way to sustainably uplift ourselves, giving way to Roots & Dreams economic projects in worker co-op and co-op housing development. She is the link that bridges the two organizations with bi-lingual outreach, ensuring both of our programs reach our immigrant neighbors in Pittsfield and wider Berkshires. She also serves as a bi-lingual therapist with Clinical Support Options. We are so appreciative of Anaelisa's countless hours of volunteerism these past 25 years and look forward to the ways we can uplift each other and our members in this coming year!
Anthony Barnaba
Advisory Board Director
Anthony is an amazing architect well known in the Berkshires! He founded Blueline Design, which has a large swath of beautiful restoration projects completed in central and southern Berkshires. The photo featured here is Anthony's restoration of Barrington Stage Wolfson's Center! We are so thankful to have Anthony on our Advisory Board to support us in completing architectural designs to rehab our donated community building at 129 Fenn St. Pittsfield, MA. The building will serve as a model for community owned real-estate, with community input for programming and a community run board. Check out Anthony's work at https://bluelinedesign.com/about
Nicole Fecteau
Board Director
More info coming soon!
Keelia Purscell
Board Director
As an investor and broker here in the Berkshires, Keelia is excited to bring her expertise to the table in support of non-extractive real-estate and non-exploitative work like co-op businesses. She is passionate about creating transitional housing here in Pittsfield and pathways to ownership through cooperative housing. She serves on our food security steering committee, driving in weekly donations from South Counties Guido's to Mercado De Vida in Pittsfield, MA. With her administrative skillsets she is supporting us as we transition from start-up phase through the next growth of our development, and will play a strong role in donor development, a key element to progressing in both our economic and community initiatives. We are so excited to work with and alongside Keelia!