So you want to abolish the traditional hierarchy...but what does that actually mean? There are as many ways to practice shared leadership as there are groups of people! Come learn from several organizations who are practicing shared leadership in a variety of ways -- from worker self-directed nonprofits, to co-directorships, to  member leadership and beyond. We’ll share stories, challenges, and insights into different models of sharing power and cultivating leader-full organizations.

About the Hosts

Shannon Ellis is Co-Executive director at CompassPoint. In the context of shared leadership across our practice, the Co-Executive Director role takes on the highest level of accountability in ensuring that CompassPoint is values-driven, sustainable, and ultimately impactful in supporting leaders, organizations, and movements committed to social justice realize their full power. 

Shannon has played key design and delivery roles in some of CompassPoint's cohort leadership development programs, including the HIVE (Healing, Inspiration, Voice, and Equity) program for reproductive justice leaders in Louisiana, and The Strong Field Project to End Domestic Violence. She's also a facilitator in our training program. 

Liz Derias is Co-Executive director at CompassPoint. In the context of shared leadership across our practice, the Co-Exectuive Director role takes on the highest level of accountability in ensuring that CompassPoint is values-driven, sustainable, and ultimately impactful in supporting leaders, organizations, and movements committed to social justice realize their full power. 

Liz is committed to economic and racial justice for all communities. She has over 20 years of national and international social justice, youth and community organizing, popular education training, and policy and advocacy experience. Liz has served as the Senior Manager of Health Policy with the Greenlining Institute leading advocacy efforts for affordable and accessible healthcare for California's communities of color.  She served as a National Training Director with the Praxis Project; a Washington, DC-based intermediary organization focused on economic and racial justice.  Liz fought for educational justice and finance reform for California’s public school students through the Kids Count campaign of Youth Together.  She led the very first West Oakland Youth Center Planning and Development Project in collaboration with Leadership Excellence and the City of Oakland and returned to serve as its inaugural full-time Executive Director. As the Educational Program Coordinator for SOUL, she led national training programs in popular education and youth and community organizing. She is an alum of the Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program of the Center for Third World Organizing.

Sue Bennett is Director of Operations and Miscellaneous Stuff, ensuring the organization's office space and internal operations contribute to the wellbeing of staff, and the effectiveness of Sustainable Economies Law Center’s programs. Sue has spent 25 years working in the nonprofit sector in a variety of program and administrative roles.  

Sue feels it's her professional destiny to advance The Law Center’s mission of supporting community resilience and grassroots economic empowerment. This feeling is fostered by her personal/political value alignment with The Law Center’s structure. Sue’s community activism is rooted in understanding and minimizing the impact of class and classism and is based on the principles of feminism and anti-racism.

Chris Tittle is a facilitator, organizer, and attorney focused on land and housing justice, participatory governance, and co-creating post capitalist / post white supremacist futures. He is Director of Land and Housing Justice at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, a democratically-run nonprofit supporting communities to create and control their own sustainable sources of land, labor, and capital. At the Law Center, he co-leads or contributes to the Law Center’s Housing, Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits, Farmland, and Money & Finance Programs.

Itzel Nuño is the Sustainable Economies Law Center’s new Workplace Democracy Project Coordinator. Itzel is a first generation Mexican American who was born and raised in San Diego, California along with her two sisters. Being raised by an immigrant single mother near a national border, has made her acutely aware of the many systemic injustices in our country and the people power required to fight back. Itzel received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Community Studies from UC Santa Cruz.

Prior to her work at the Law Center, Itzel was the Rapid Response Network Coordinator for the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice (CCIJ). Itzel coordinated emergency legal and community led responses to Immigration and Customs Enforcement across the state of California. Before she joined CCIJ, Itzel worked at a social impact strategy firm called Third Plateau as their Community Manager. As the Community Manager, Itzel was responsible for growing, strengthening, and leveraging the firm’s network of social impact leaders.

Itzel previously taught video production to youth in San Diego and Guatemala. She currently lives in a small but warm apartment in Oakland with her partner, cat, and plants. She enjoys dancing, backpacking and sewing in her free time.

#Coopalooza Week Sponsors

We will have an ASL interpreter working at this event.