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Team

In this section:

Our team of researchers, trainers, and technologists are based in Buffalo, New York City, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh.

Our Team

  • Gin Armstrong

    she/her

    Executive Director

    Gin Armstrong is the Executive Director at LittleSis. In this role, Gin keeps the organization humming and supports our research and tech teams as they work to expose corporate influence, support on-the-ground organizing, and build critical tools for our movements. Her work for LittleSis has been widely covered in national outlets including The Washington Post, The Guardian, Politico, and CNBC.

    Gin has held research roles at Worth Rises, Media Matters for America, and GMU’s Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, now the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. She has a BA in Philosophy from Roanoke College and an MS in Conflict Analysis from George Mason University. She is based in Buffalo, NY.

  • Tia Brown

    she/they

    LittleSis.org Community Manager

    Tia Brown is a writer, educator, and creative from Buffalo, NY. She holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University, is the former editor of Utterance, and is an Oishei 2020 Leaders of Color Fellow. Her work has been featured in CivicScience, LittleSis, One for One Thousand, Qween City, and Truthout. When they aren’t writing they can be found creating music under the moniker Projections.

  • Robert Galbraith

    he/him

    Senior Research Analyst

    Robert Galbraith is a Senior Research Analyst and leads our state power mapping program, where he provides research and strategic support in partnership with base-building organizations challenging corporate power across the United States. Rob has been with LittleSis since 2012 and has previously focused on energy, finance, and real estate in New York State and Buffalo. Rob lives in Buffalo and received a BA in philosophy and psychology from SUNY Fredonia.

  • Molly Gott

    she/her

    Research Tools for Organizers Training Series Coordinator

    Molly coordinates LittleSis’ Research Tools for Organizers training series. She has been working with LittleSis since 2015, partnering with social movement organizations across the country to train and support organizers and activists in power research. Before joining Littlesis, she was a community organizer in St. Louis, Missouri. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

  • Joseph Lacey

    he/him

    Lead Technical Engineer

    Joseph Lacey is the Lead Technical Engineer at LittleSis, where he is responsible for maintaining servers, fixing bugs, and managing the growing team of tech volunteers. Prior to joining LittleSis, Joseph worked as a tech organizer for 15 years, focusing on software development, infrastructure management, and promoting free and open-source software within social movements. He holds an MA in Philosophy from The New School for Social Research and currently resides in Atlanta, Georgia.

  • Munira Lokhandwala

    she/her

    Director, Tech and Training

    As the Director of Tech and Training, Munira coordinates key projects and initiatives related to LittleSis technology and our program to train aspiring power researchers. She also leads LittleSis’ participation in Crescendo – a project with Action Center on Race and the Economy and MPower Change – to map the corporate power structure that profits from and is complicit in Islamophobia.

    Previously, she spent 9 years in Oakland doing labor organizing, working as a cook, and teaching undergraduate students about experimental film. She received her BA in Religious Studies from Bryn Mawr College, an MA in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London, and an MA in Rhetoric from UC Berkeley. She is based in Philadelphia.

  • Lauren Parker

    they/them

    Senior Research Analyst

    Lauren is a Senior Researcher in the Climate Program at LittleSis. They have over 12 years of research experience, with many of those years working closely with organizers, activists and community members to advance campaigns for housing, environmental and education justice. Prior to their role at LittleSis, Lauren supported ambitious local programs and policies designed to protect renters facing eviction, and structured data-driven analyses for federal environmental policy.

    They received Master’s degrees in City Planning and Urban Spatial Analytics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BS in Geology from the College of William and Mary. They are based in Philadelphia.

  • Derek Seidman

    he/him

    Contributing Writer

    Derek Seidman is a writer, researcher, and historian living in Buffalo, New York. He worked as a research analyst and then research director for LittleSis from 2017 through 2022. His writings have appeared in In These Times, Jacobin, Truthout, Washington Post, and other outlets, and his research has been referenced in the Guardian, Houston Chronicle, Politico, and other media. Along with being a contributing writer to LittleSis, he is a regular contributor to Truthout.

  • Aly Shaw

    she/her

    Research Analyst

    Aly is a Research Analyst working on the state power mapping program at LittleSis. Based in Pittsburgh, she previously spent 8 years as an environmental justice organizer at Pittsburgh UNITED and labor organizer at UFCW Local 1776. Over the years she has led campaigns to prevent the privatization of Pittsburgh’s water system, to make drinking water safer and more affordable, and organized grocery store workers to win higher wages and safer working conditions during the COVID 19 pandemic. She received her BA in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh and her Master’s in Public Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.

Board

  • Brittany Alston

    Board Member

    Brittany is the Director of the Philly Black Worker Project where she organizes Black workers in non-traditional industries and builds the organizational infrastructure for the project. She was formerly the research director at Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE). She believes in using strategic campaigning to build power in poor communities and communities of color. Before joining ACRE, Brittany worked as a policy analyst at DC Fiscal Policy Institute and a union researcher with UNITE HERE and HPAE. Her prior research advocated for pro unionization policies and unionized workplaces, as vehicles to fight for dignity and raise the standard of living for workers in low-income communities. Brittany holds a B.A. in urban policy and planning from Rutgers University and a Master’s degree in city planning from University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design.

  • Anthony Armstrong

    Board Member

    Anthony Armstrong (he/him) is a racial equity and organizational development consultant. He provides training, facilitation, coaching, assessment, planning, and technical assistance for organizational change and equitable development.

    He is often called on to advise during start-up, transition, and transformation phases of organizations and collaborative efforts committed to improving their mission performance by living into their shared values and increasing their relevance within systemically disinvested communities.

    His clients cut across sectors from non-profit and philanthropic to academic, governmental, and corporate, ranging in size from kitchen table organizations to multi-billion dollar organizations employing thousands.

    Anthony holds a BA in Media Study from SUNY Buffalo and an MS in Urban Affairs from Hunter College.

  • Zac Chapman

    Board Member

    Born & raised in New Jersey, Zac holds a background in food systems organizing & resource mobilization strategy. He currently serves as the Resource Mobilization Director at the New Economy Coalition, where his work centers around how to build out more transparent, sustainable, and cooperative ways to mobilize resources to the solidarity economy movement. His key area of interest centers at the intersection of philanthropy and social movements. The ‘new gilded age’ of wealth hoarding demands experiments on how social movements work within, without, and against philanthropy. His work is driven by helping these experiments (e.g. democratically-controlled funds, participatory budgeting campaigns, or abolitionist “non-reformist reform” policies) to thrive and scale.

    Prior to joining the New Economy Coalition, he worked for Food to Power, where he facilitated the transformation of a food rescue project into a community wealth building organization. More recently, he worked with Food Rescue Alliance to mobilize resources for (and help co-design) a platform cooperative for grassroots food rescue and mutual aid projects. He also loves tending to his garlic brood and cooking big meals for lots of people.

  • Ellen David Friedman

    Board Member

    Ellen David Friedman has been a labor organizer for nearly 50 years, with long and extended engagement in progressive electoral organizing starting with Bernie Sanders in the mid-70s, and continuing through the founding of the Vermont Progressive Party, which remains the most established left third party in the US. She worked for the United Electrical Workers (UE), the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and – for 20 years – the Vermont-National Education Association (VT-NEA).

    In 2005, Ellen and her husband took early retirement and began a decade of working in China, where she became involved at virtually every level of labor movement work including the establishment of an Internation Labor Research Center at Sun-yat Sen University in Guangzhou.

    Since 2015 she has volunteered to strengthen the “rank & file” pole of the labor movement through serving as an organizer, trainer, consultant, and Board Chair for Labor Notes, the 40-year-old media and education project that anchors participatory democratic values as the primary path to rebalancing power between workers and bosses.

  • Maya Ragsdale

    Board Member

    Maya Ragsdale is an organizer and community lawyer in Miami, Florida. She is the executive director of Beyond the Bars, a base-building organization that builds the power of people with loved ones in jail in Miami to address issues that impact them. Her work at Beyond the Bars grew out of her work as a member of and staff attorney at Dream Defenders, an organization that builds the power of Black and brown youth across Florida. In her role at Dream Defenders, she provided legal, policy, and strategic support to abolitionist organizers on campaigns to divest from policing and incarceration and also built a legal support system for people who were incarcerated in Miami jails.

    Maya has also supported bail funds throughout Florida, built legal defense networks to respond to the George Floyd uprisings, and engaged in various other community and movement initiatives. For her work, she has been supported by fellowships with organizations including Law for Black Lives and Justice Catalyst. She is a former public defender and legal aid attorney and graduated from Harvard Law School in 2018