Jenya Cassidy is the Director of the California Work & Family Coalition. The Coalition is an alliance of parents, caregivers, advocates, and union members organizing to expand and protect every Californian’s right to put their family first. The Coalition led the campaign to win the first Paid Family Leave law in California in 2002. Since then, Jenya has worked tirelessly with stakeholders to ensure that all families have equal access to paid leave, paid sick days, and fair schedules. As a work family advocate and community organizer, Jenya has a long-standing commitment to social and economic justice.

Prior to her work with the Coalition, Jenya served as a worksite representative for the healthcare workers union and the Policy Director for the Labor Project for Working Families. She is on the national board of Family Values @Work and holds a Bachelor’s Degree from UCLA. She lives with her three children in Alameda, California.

Alicia Garza is an organizer, writer, and freedom dreamer living and working in Oakland, CA. She is the Special Projects Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the nation’s leading voice for dignity and fairness for the millions of domestic workers in the United States, most of whom are women. She is also the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter, a national organizing project focused on combatting anti-Black state sanctioned violence.Alicia’s work challenges us to celebrate the contributions of Black queer women’s work within popular narratives of Black movements, and reminds us that the Black radical tradition is long, complex and international.

Her activism reflects organizational strategies and visions that connect emerging social movements without diminishing the specificity of the structural violence facing Black lives. She has been the recipient of numerous awards for her organizing work, including the Root 100 2015 list of African American achievers and influencers between the ages of 25 and 45, and was featured in the Politico 50 guide to the thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2015.