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 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 Coalition 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.
Terry Moore
Board Director
Terry is co-founder of Rose & Cole's Transport Co-op, not too mention a worker owner in Handyman Group Services, an LLC cooperative in our growing network, founded just this past year by himself and 5 other very talented men with expertise in electrical, plumbing, sheet-rocking, painting and more! Terry is extremely talented in many different trades from carpentry to masonry and himself and the Handyman cooperative are supporting the rehabilitation of the different spaces within it. community owned real-estate project at 117-133 Fenn St. Aside from all that, Terry volunteers weely at Mercado De Vida, our free grocery store. We are so thankful to have his expertise and direction!
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!
Maria Arias
Board Director
Maria Arias, Dominican immigrant and social worker for the City of Pittsfield, joined our coalition during the pandemic. Maria organized many immigrants workers into a sewing collective in order to provide economic impetus to immigrant families that could not access traditional pandemic benefits while also providing our local shops much needed masks that kept us safe! These efforts strengthened these immigrant families which led them to create MASIC, the Maggie Sadoway Immigrant Cooperative, a member organization, we now co-organize with with. Additionally, Maria leads organizing efforts these last two years that focus on health, serving every Tuesday at our Mercado De Vida free clothing and grocery market, strengthening bi-lingual access to resources. She also heads a problem gambling education initiative thses last two years, thanks to a Health Resources in Action Grant. We are so thankful to her!
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
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Tim O'Donnell
Board Director
More info coming soon!
Nicole Fecteau
Board Director
Nicole is super passionate about cooperative economy and its ability to empower voices in workplaces and housing. As a single mom with a disability, living on a limited income, NIcole was drawn to community organizing in her early 20's,as a means to cultivate a strong mutual aid network, so key to survival for people living in poverty. After serving as an Americorps in community college, followed by a year of service as an Americorps VISTA, she organized for 10 years with a grassroots organization, Manos Unidas, founding a co-housing shelter, Bethesda & Ruth's Mission while co-directing a bi-lingual social justice art zine, Fronteras Comunes, and a bi-lingual women's support group, Mujeres Moviendo Montanas.
As Nicole continued to be drawn to cooperative economy, in particular worker cooperatives, viewing it as a revolutionary way to empower vulnerable people's voices in decision making power while also uplifting them economically, she envisioned an organization that would strengthen support for the growth of such enterprises, a hopeful key player in answering the economic downturn in gateway cities like hers . From that vision, and with support of co-founders, the first being her newly met partner, Michael, and her friend Terry, Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds was born in 2017!
Utilizing movement building techniques and mutual aid alongside traditional service models like technical assistance and ecosystem support, Roots & Dreams working class empowerment mission has focused on 3 prongs- cooperative business development, community owned real-estate and food sovereignty. She is extremely moved by the passion and commitment brought by so many community members who have chosen to join in the hard work of building out the organization and it's mission. Eight years in, this growing network now includes 7 budding cooperative businesses and growing! Situated in the nexus of Pittsfield's two most impoverished neighborhoods, our community owned real-estate model at 117-133 Fenn St, is slowly but surely being rehabbed into a shared community resource, retrofitted for the needs of vulnerable cooperative businesses. Food sovereignty programming which currently includes a free grocery market and community garden will now soon include a shared community kitchen. Nicole is now serving as Co-Director of Roots & Dreams and Mustard Seeds, but in the next year will transition to serving on the working board, which represents workers within our organization.
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