The COVID-19 crisis makes it clear that, now more than ever, strong and competent local leaders will guide us through these times.
America has amazing elected leaders who are putting people over politics; elected leaders who are making tough public health and safety decisions that will have long-lasting effects on our communities.
But we also know that you don't have to be an elected official to be there to support your community during the COVID-19 pandemic. Right now, there is an ecosystem of leaders contributing to the well-being of our communities. Such as leaders who are delivering food to neighbors, or printing face masks for front line workers; leaders who are protecting and securing housing for those in need or offering workplace support for people dealing with difficult employments issues. These Unseen COVID-19 Leaders may never make it to the front page of the newspaper or be highlighted on the evening news, but are making a real and lasting impact on their communities.
New Leaders Council is proud of our fellows and alumni who are serving as local voices in their communities. Leaders who are taking action to keep us healthy, well, and connected. These leaders will be there to rebuild what will be lost during this pandemic. These leaders will continue to focus on taking care of each other, not just themselves, in an effort for a stronger community and a stronger nation.
The NLC Twin Cities Chapter is working with their community partner the Minnesota Freedom Fund to support this nonprofit's work during the COVID-19 crisis.
The Minnesota Freedom Fund pays criminal bail and immigration bond for those who cannot afford to as we seek to end discriminatory, coercive, and oppressive jailing.Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic folks are still being held on bails they cannot afford.
Led by current fellow Dr. Alister Martin, NLC Boston fellows led a campaign to change a statewide policy that would have dramatically impacted the lives of black and brown communities in the state.
Because of coronavirus, hospitals across MA were running out of ventilators and were instructed to institute a system called “crisis standards of care“. This essentially is the system to choose who the winners and losers are and which patients get a ventilator and which do not. In essence, the more chronic medical conditions you have the less likely you are to get a ventilator if you are really sick, for example a person has diabetes would get two points making them less likely to get a ventilator compared to someone else who does not have diabetes. These guidelines would disproportionately bias against black and brown patients.
Members of the 2020 NLC Boston Fellows class coordinated an advocacy campaign that included a social and traditional campaign; worked with the Black and Latino Caucuses of MA to submit a letter to the Governor; mobilized physicians, nurses, and social workers to speak out against the guidelines; organized health care providers to sign a letter with more than 1,000 signatures.
On April 20, MA reversed course and revised the guidelines based on this activism and the work of groups throughout the state.
NLC Palm Beach continues to give back to their community during the COVID-19 pandemic by volunteering with Feeding South Florida, in partnership with the City of Greenacres and Mayor Joel Flores.
YT Bell (NLC Atlanta ’18) hosted a drive and walkup COVID-19 testing site in Clarkston, Georgia in partnership with Ethne Health, local churches, and nonprofits.
Approximately 200 individuals were tested and provided food to self-quarantine until their test results were returned from the lab. Listen to YT's Zag episode here.
Alexis Bromley (NLC Omaha '17) along with her nonprofit One Omaha recognized a gap that needed to be filled by neighbors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
One Omaha teamed up with a technology platform in Seattle called "GroopIt" for neighbors to support one another. Learn more about Alexis's work here.
Nick Cain (NLC Portland '19) has helped to bring Frontline Food PDX to Portland, which provides meals from local restaurants to the healthcare workers who are on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hernán Carvente Martinez (NLC New York City '16) is working with leaders across the U.S. through the #FreeOurYouth to demand that governors in all 50 states release youth from juvenile facilities to protect incarcerated children against COVID-19.
Dr. Stephen Chao (NLC Houston '15) is a family physician working on the frontlines Legacy Community Health, a local Federally Qualified Community Health Center.
He is caring for under-served residents in the Southwest Houston/Sharpstown/Gulfton areas and swabbing patients for COVID-19.
Dr. Theresa Cheng (NLC Los Angeles '20) is a Senior Emergency Medical Resident at a Southern California hospital.
Dr. Cheng testified in front of members of Congress, speaking out against the growing racism against AAPIs and advocated for stronger labor rights for immigrants that mixed status families should be able to receive stimulus funding and expansion of ICE free areas, like food pantries and COVID testing sites. You can hear Dr. Cheng's remarks starting around the 15:30 mark here.
Dr. Cheng shares her experience supporting patients in emergency rooms and how the virus has exposed so many of our social, political, and medical systems to be inequitable. Listen to Dr. Cheng's Zag episode here.
Dr. Magdala (Maggie) Chery (NLC New Jersey '18) recently lost her father due to COVID-19 complications. After seeing the disproportionate impact of the public health crisis on Black and Brown communities, as informed by her father's own experience with the virus, Maggie created a movement entitled #notjustablackbody.
The movement is sparking a conversation highlighting the faces of people of color who have been impacted during this pandemic. Learn more about #notjustablackbody here.
Cairo Eubanks (NLC Broward '20) co-created Uplifting News vlog, a positive news and content site that provides hope and happiness during the pandemic.
The bite-sized news vlogs include daily quotes, affirmations, and uplifting news headlines. Find it on Facebook here.
Shadora Ford (NLC Detroit '20) works for the City of Detroit Mayor's office and has spearheaded efforts to deliver sanitation products and floor decals for social distancing to grocery stores, gas stations and local essential business open during this time.
Listen to Shadora's Zag episode here: https://soundcloud.com/thezagpodcast/episode-204-w-shadora-ford
Nicole Fordey (NLC New Hampshire '20) is a social worker and substance use disorder clinician working to connect to clients during the pandemic and make sure they are caring for their mental health.
Nicole has been advocating hard for agencies to allow for sessions over the phone and video conferencing to adhere to needed social distancing while also providing necessary services.
Jaime-Alexis Fowler (NLC Boston '09) launched Empower Work, a text hotline that provides trained peer support for work issues.
During this COVID-19 crisis, as people are stressed and overwhelmed with having hours cut, being laid off, worried about their safety at work, or unable to go to work because of shelter-in-place orders, Empower Work is providing critical support for working Americans. Read trends they're seeing, ways we can all be leaders in times of crisis at work, and how you can get help right now.
Pearl Gabel (NLC NJ '20) serves as the State of New Jersey's digital director, ensuring New Jersey residents and workers receive COVID-19 state updates in real time on multi social media platforms.
Listen to Pearl's Zag episode here.
Krissy Gutierrez (NLC San Antonio '19) created a Little Free Pantry to provide household items to her neighbors.
Similar to a Little Free Library, the pantry works on an honor system, where neighbors can take or leave canned food, supplies and personal care products. “I’m looking forward to seeing how neighbors come together again,” Gutierrez said in an interview with Rivard Report. “I think we’ve gotten away from a lot of that.” Check out the full story here.
Crystal Hudson (NLC NYC '15) launched a mutual aid group in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn to support her neighbors during the COVID-19 crisis.
Marlin Jenkins (NLC Maryland '16), a member of the Maryland National Guard, has been activated to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.
As a Lieutenant Colonel, he is a senior logistics officer in charge of acquiring and distributing PPE to Soldiers conducting COVID-19 screening sites and distributing meals throughout Maryland. When not on military duty, as the community liaison to Delegate Wanika Fisher, Esq (D-47B) he is volunteering to distribute supplies to his neighbors in Hyattsville, MD.
Kedrick Jones (NLC Arkansas ’20) is an IT Professional for a public transportation business, and is an essential worker.
When many of his co-workers had to transition to work from home, Kedrick prepared hardware and software to help them with the transition, and taught them how to effectively use technology from home so that they could continue to work. Recently his town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas experienced a terrible storm that left thousands of residents without power, damaging several homes including Kedrick’s. While continuing to go in to work and navigating COVID-19 restrictions, Kedrick helped his senior neighbors to make sure that they had the resources and technology needed to stay in touch with their families while being socially isolated and navigating the post storm damage.
Working for New York State Public Employees Federation (PEF), one New York State's major union representing state employees including all healthcare and emergency responders, Meghan Keegan (NLC National Curriculum Chair) has been fighting for safe working conditions across multiple state agencies including our prisons.
Nick Large (NLC San Francisco '20) is curating resources for homeless service providers and systems including information created by Homebase, and a Homebase curated set of resources from over 300 sources.
The guide, which can be found here, focuses on essential materials most useful to those working to prevent the spread of COVID-19, protect the safety of staff and people experiencing homelessness, and prevent people from becoming homeless as a result of the outbreak.
Derrick H. Lewis (NLC Board of Directors) created The Bronx Community Relief Effort to raise and deploy $10M and provide resources across the borough of The Bronx, New York.
The mission of the Relief Effort is focused on impacting eight areas of need including focusing on the health of Bronx residents and purchasing PPE for healthcare and essential workers, small business relief, distributing micro-grants, food insecurity, equity and justice, housing stability, non-profit economic relief, and connectivity and technology gaps.
Derrick is partnering with NLC Honorary Co-Chair Michael Blake, and several other Bronxites, elected officials, community advocates, and nonprofits to provide direct, integrated relief to the Bronx through a unified response.
Learn more about the work Derrick is doing at thebronx.org.
Dr. Atyia Martin (NLC Boston '15) is hosting weekly Collective Care Sessions, webinars centered around collective care and resilience through the lenses of emergency management, social vulnerability, and racial equity.
Additionally, through her nonprofit Next Leadership Development Corporation, Dr. Martin is synthesizing resources in Boston into a searchable, regularly updated tool for Black residents who are disproportionately bearing the economic and health burdens of COVID-19 in Boston. Listen to Dr. Martin's Zag episode here.
Brandon McKoy (NLC New Jersey '13) has been named to New Jersey Governor Murphy's Restart and Recovery Advisory Council.
As the President of NJ Policy Perspective, Brandon is committed to seeing New Jersey recover in a manner which reduces the inequities and disparities that have worked to cause and worsen this crisis.
As Executive Director of Sakhi for South Asian Women, Kavita Mehra (NLC New Jersey '13) is on the frontlines ensuring that domestic violence survivors’ basic needs are met during this unstable moment.
The fallout from COVID-19 disproportionately affects Sakhi's clients who are overwhelmingly immigrant women of color with little to no income—and if employed, often in hourly wage work in service jobs that are being decimated by growing social distancing requirements. Sakhi is experiencing a surge in COVID-19 related calls from existing clients who are losing jobs, facing food and housing insecurity, and experiencing pressure to allow abusers back into their homes—violating orders of protection. These setbacks are also creating mounting levels of anxiety and depression among clients, taxing the organization's mental health services. In response, Sakhi has modified all of their core services to maintain continuity of support for clients; expanded their Food Justice Program to address rising food insecurity; and expanded their Client Emergency Assistance Program to provide immediate help to clients in crisis.Kavita's work during this crisis has been uplifted in The New York Times, Vice, CNBC and Market Watch.
Craig Montuori (NLC Silicon Valley '16) is on the leadership team of the C19 Coalition, which is bringing crucial partners together to help build an efficient, unified supply chain for PPE and lifesaving medical devices.
Maria De La Cruz-Morgan (NLC Houston '18) and her team working on the front lines with the Houston Health Department facilitating the COVID-19 call center and coordinating appointments for testing in the Greater Houston-Metropolitan Area.
Listen to Maria's Zag episode here.
Dr. Juliana Muchinyi (NLC Omaha '16) is an essential health care provider in the epicenter of the COVID pandemic in New York City.
Along with her her general surgery co-residents, Dr. Muchinyi is taking care of COVID patients in the ICU at the NYC H&H home programming in addition to an external rotation at Northwell Health facilities. General surgery residents have ICU training and are playing a crucial role in conjunction with critical care teams across the country.
Dr. Atul Nakhasi (NLC Los Angeles '20) is a physician with the LA County Department of Health Services and a frontline healthcare worker during the COVID-19 crisis.
Dr. Nakhasi's clinic, the Martin Luther King Outpatient Center in Watts, Compton is a COVID-19 testing site. Learn more about the work he is doing here.
Normally, Dr. Bich-May Nguyen (NLC Houston '15) sees patients and teaches learners in a bustling community-based family medicine residency program in a suburb of greater Houston.
These days, the clinic is staffed with a skeleton crew to minimize exposure to coronavirus.
May has answered an online survey about her areas of expertise and what ages she can care for so that when the expected surge of coronavirus patients needing hospitalization hits the Houston area, she could be pulled to work in a new location and setting to help out.
Krista Nightengale (NLC Dallas '17) is using her urban design nonprofit, the Better Block Foundation, to create face shields for healthcare professionals.
Using the organization's CNC router, they are able to produce 120 visors in one hour, where it would typically take three hours to produce one visor. Better Building Block Foundation has open-sourced their design so that anyone anywhere can download and start producing face shields.
The goal is two-fold: get the PPEs into the hands of those who need them; create some jobs for those with CNCs who find their business is suffering. A few weeks ago, Krista's team was building a bike lane. Today, they're building face shields.
Harish Patel (NLC Chicago '11) and Ebony Scott (NLC Chicago '11) launched a COVID-19 emergency cash assistance fund called #GiveTogetherNow Chicago.
This fund provides a one time $500 cash transfer to Chicagoans who have lost income due to the effort to contain the virus. They have a goal of raising $3 million for Chicago residents. Learn more about their work here.
Through the Community Foundation for the Greater Capital Region, Jonathan Richardson (NLC Capital District NY '16) launched the Capital Region Community COVID-19 Response Fund in partnership with our local United Way to rapidly deploy financial resources to nonprofits on the frontlines of the pandemic.
Behind the scenes, Jonathan created the grant application infrastructure online to make it accessible for all nonprofits, assisted in raising over $800,000 for the fund, and managed the communications and marketing about the response fund, which has distributed over $650,000 in grants so far.
Michelle Roberts (NLC San Francisco '17), a social worker who runs a city mental health clinic for low income, vulnerable, older adults in San Francisco. Throughout the pandemic she has worked to keep her clients safe while supporting their continued mental health needs, which are further exacerbated by isolation and fear of the virus, and of death.
Michelle was deployed as part of the city's response to the virus as part of a team setting up Isolation and Quarantine hotels for the city's most vulnerable, those who had been diagnosed with COVID-19, or awaiting results, with no place to self isolate.
Ebony Scott (NLC Chicago '11) and Harish Patel (NLC Chicago '11) launched a COVID-19 emergency cash assistance fund called #GiveTogetherNow Chicago.
This fund provides a one time $500 cash transfer to Chicagoans who have lost income due to the effort to contain the virus. They have a goal of raising $3 million for Chicago residents. Learn more about their work here.
Andy Sebranek (NLC VT '20) is a frontline health care worker at Planned Parenthood in Burlington, VT.
Ashley Sharp (NLC Maryland '20) serves as Deputy Chief of Staff to Prince George's County At-Large Councilmember Calvin Hawkins, and has been working on the front lines to address food insecurity among residents in Prince George’s County.
Jersey City, NJ Councilman James Solomon (NLC NJ '15) is fighting to ensure that all of low-income Jersey City residents - no matter their immigration status - have access to rent relief during the COVID-19 crisis.
Councilman Solomon has been working to expand a proposed ordinance that would freeze rent in Jersey City to include those in one-four family homes. Solomon also created a letter writing campaign where volunteer connect with senior over the age of 70 during this time of isolation.
Yoana Tchoukleva (NLC Oakland ’18) is advocating for the urgent release of people from prison due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read her recent article here.
In addition to her legal work as an attorney and her dedication to the mutual aid network in her neighborhood in West Oakland, she is also holding reentry restorative justice circles over Zoom to support folks on parole and probation who are facing additional housing and employment barriers during the pandemic.
Igor Tregub (NLC Los Angeles '09 and NLC Oakland Co-Director) is leveraging his position as a local elected official to assist his Berkeley neighbors.
Igor is working to keep his community in the loop about ever-emerging updates, leading efforts for the Bay Area and at a statewide level to adopt the strongest possible eviction and foreclosure moratoria, paid sick leave measures, and other stabilizing and anti-displacement policies, and serving as a connector between those in need of various groceries and medical supplies. Igor's work has been highlighted in a recent episode of KQED's Bay Curious Podcast. Also, you can listen to Igor's Zag episode here.
As Founder and Executive Director of Nolef Turns Inc., Sheba Williams (NLC Virginia '20) is providing necessary support to those who are transitioning from incarceration during this pandemic.
Nolef Turns has delivered thousands of meals and various supplies, medications and entertainment/technology options for families with youth. They are paying for hotel stays for individuals who are not eligible for permanent or transitional housing, which is at an increase since some families are diverting recently released individuals because a lack of coronavirus testing.
The Nolef Turns team is doing this all while still helping with restoration of rights, voter registration, employment and housing searches, behavioral health referrals, social service programs, submitting pardons and clemency packages and empowering those who are directly impacted by the criminal and juvenile legal systems to get involved and make changes in our broken systems.