Organizational Design Fellow
Simon is supporting the Worker Co-op and Grassroots Finance Programs. Their main focus is on increasing our collective capacity to embody democracy, liberation, and empowerment in our organizations while maintaining efficiency and effectiveness. They also research how banking and finance regulations can be changed to open up the possibility for community empowerment and support the Law Center's Internal Resilience Circle.
Their Work at Sustainable Economies Law Center
How can organizations be the change they wish to see in the world? How can we create relationships and structures that enable us to make our fullest contributions to the world? How can we halt the reproduction of oppressive dynamics in our organizations? How can we create containers that encourage the personal, interpersonal, collective, and systemic change we need to bring about a just and resilient world? How do we do so while continuing to be operationally efficient and financially feasible? And how do we make sure we don’t get sued?
Simon researches the intersection between leadership, anti-oppression, management science, and love in order to support the development of holistic organizations. This year they will be developing resources for organizations seeking to be intentional about their design, organizing spaces to deepen our collective understanding of the task at hand, and supporting the Center to refine its own practice.
This far into their time at the Law Center Simon has written about the power of wholeness in the workplace and how organizations can stay in alignment with their transformative visions.
Prior Work
In a past life, Simon directed a high school marching band and taught middle schoolers how to play piano. After that, they landed at Berkeley Law where stewarded the Restorative Justice Committee in their efforts to create a holistic law school culture and also bridge the gap between the ivory tower and the lived experiences of people impacted by mass incarceration. Their experience at the San Quentin Roundtable piqued their interest in the relationship between experience, identity, social structure, intentional gathering, and conflict transformation. Their restorative justice training provided him with a foundation in facilitating safe and equalizing spaces.
After brief stints at the Alameda County Public Defender’s and the Hayward Burns Institute, Simon decided to shift their focus from mass incarceration to the broader social and economic conditions that perpetuated and enabled it. They began doing more anti-oppression training and organizing, was a teaching assistant to a class on the law of social entrepreneurship, and did a year-long externship with SELC researching democratic organizations.
Simon is active in the Bay Area Jewish community and lives in a community house filled with exciting experiments in collaboration, art, and creativity. When they're not nerding out on liberating structures, you can find them writing, performing spoken word, or hugging trees (seriously, don’t knock it til you try it;)