The Community Learning Partnership is gradually growing as it launches new projects. Its Executive Director and Assistant Director are based in Washington, and the Director of the Connecticut Pipeline Initiative will be based in Hartford. Each CLP project involves several additional people and institutional partners, including people in several countries collaborating on the International Working Group for University Education for Community Change.
Andrew Mott — Executive Director <amott [at] communitylearningpartnership.org>
Andrew currently is Director of the Community Learning Partnership and a Senior Fellow at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, working with the Research Center on Leadership in Action. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, and a member of the Michigan Bar.
In 1967, Mr. Mott began 35 years of service with the Center for Community Change and its predecessor the Citizens' Crusade Against Poverty. He served as the Center's Director of Field Operations for twenty years. In that capacity, he was responsible for directing the Center's field staff as it provided technical assistance to several hundred grassroots low-income and minority community organizations and community development corporations throughout the U.S. In addition, Mr. Mott provided on-site advice and assistance to grassroots groups with regard to organizational development, housing, community reinvestment, and community development.
As the Center's Deputy Executive Director for several years, Mr. Mott had primary responsibility for planning and program development for CCC. He was responsible for launching new initiatives on jobs, economic development, and leadership development, and overseeing a number of CCC special projects, studies, training initiatives, and pilot programs. Over the years Mr. Mott has launched and directed several special prjoects, created and led national coalitions, conducted studies and helped lead joint efforts to develop new public policies regarding poverty and community development.
Mr. Mott became Executive Director of the Center in 1998. During his five years as Executive Director, he expanded the organization and deepened its emphasis on community organizing and public policy work. New capacities for participatory action research, media and communications, and national issue campaigns were added to the Center during his directorship.
After leaving the Center in 2002, Mr. Mott created the Community Learning Partnership, through which he works with others to expand learning within the field of community organizing and social change. This work includes research and writing as well as a series of action projects designed to strengthen evaluation, organizational learning, writing, teaching and training in this field with the goal of helping young people and mid-career practitioners develop the knowledge, experience, vision, values and skills they need as they work for community and social change.
Mr. Mott has directed, edited, and contributed to numerous studies related to housing and community development, grassroots involvement in monitoring, evaluating and acting on public policy issues, and strategies for building grassroots capacity and increasing poor people's impact on the issues which most concern them. Mr. Mott coauthored Housing and Public Policy, a book published by the American Enterprise Institute. His most recent publications have been Moving to Scale in Improving America's Housing, Evaluation: Good News for Funders and Strengthening Social Change Through Assesssment and Organizational Learning.
Among his board responsibilities, Mr. Mott has served as founding Chairman of the Coalition on Human Needs, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the Working Group for Community Development Reform, and the Coalition for Low Income Community Development. He has also served on the boards of the Presbyterian Economic Development Corporation, Community Catalyst, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, the National Neighborhood Coalition, Ayuda and ActionAid USA.
Prior to his work with CCC, Mr. Mott served two years in the Peace Corps as a university instructor in the Department of National Development at Pahlavi University in Shiraz, Iran. This program combined undergraduate and masters' level work, and included experiential learning in the villages as well as an interdisciplinary curriculum. His teaching in Iran followed his service as a management intern in the Community Action Program of the Office of Economic Opportunity, where he assisted with early planning for the "war on poverty's" health and legal services programs. During his law studies, he worked in electoral politics and as a fellow of the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, Switzerland, where he helped prepare working papers for the Bangkok conference on civil liberties and constitutional government in Asia.
Soyun Park — Associate Director <soyun [at] communitylearningpartnership.org>
Soyun Park is Associate Director of the Community Learning Partnership, specializing in local partnership development and community college programs. In that capacity she draws on her extensive experience in youth organizing, statewide coalition-building and policy work, organizer training, and grassroots nonprofit leadership.
Soyun Park was among the founders and the Executive Director of One Nation Enlightened, the only youth-led youth organizing group in Colorado. The high school youth organizing program, Students 4 Justice (S4J), and the youth and community organizing program, Streets United (SU), received national recognition for their outstanding work in education reform and police accountability. S4J has published two special reports, Struggling to Succeed: Broken Promises and Post-Busing Reforms at Denver's Manual High School and From the Outside Looking In: Racial Tracking at Denver's East High School, and fought for student-led institutional changes for educational justice. S4J and SU led a campaign from the streets to the State Legislature to pass the only anti-Racial Profiling law in Colorado.
Soyun was also among the founders and then the Co-Director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition, a statewide organization of 45 labor, community and faith organizations, fighting for racial and economic justice.
Soyun was the Lead Organizer and Director of Esfuerzos Unidos, a bi-lingual student and parent organizing group that won $1.3 million in improvements for their neighborhood elementary school. Soyun is an anti-racism trainer and has developed curricula on Youth Organizing and Dismantling White Privilege, Building Multi-Racial Organizations. She has worked on numerous ballot measures and electoral campaigns and is an Organizer at heart. She has served as a member of the Board of Director of the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing since 2000. Soyun lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and two children.
Ken Rolling <ken [at] communitylearningpartnership.org>
Ken Rolling recently completed six years (2003-2009) as National Executive Director of Parents for Public Schools (PPS), a national network of parents in organizing in eleven states to improve public schools especially for low-income and families of color. Under Ken’s direction PPS developed a statewide organization in Mississippi called “From the Schoolhouse to the Statehouse.” From 1995 to 2002 Ken was Executive Director of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the largest privately funded public school reform effort in Chicago in those years. President Barack Obama was the founding chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. For ten years- 1985-1995 -- Ken was a program officer and Associate Director of The Woods Fund of Chicago where he developed and managed the Fund’s priority for community organizing and public school reform.
Ken serves as Chair of The Needmor Fund Board of Directors; Chair of the Shanti Foundation for Peace; and board member of Community Organizing and Family Issues (COFI). He lives in Evanston, Illinois; is married to Rochelle Davis; and has two children.
Ken co-authored a chapter in Letters to the Next President: Straight Talk about the Real Crisis in Education, Teachers College Press – published in 2004 and 2007. And authored a chapter in School Reform in Chicago: Lessons in Policy and Practice, Harvard Education Press, 2004.
LaDon James <ladon [at] communitylearningpartnership.org>
LaDon James is currently working with the Community Learning Partnership on Research and Administration. She was formerly the National Field Manager at the Center for Progressive Leadership (CPL) a national leadership institute. Prior to joining CPL, LaDon served as Campaign Organizer at the Center for Community Change (CCC), a national policy/advocacy organization based in Washington, DC. Prior to joining CCC, she worked as the Lead Community Organizer in the Kingsbridge Heights for the Northwest Bronx Community Clergy Coalition a community organizing group which focuses on winning decent and affordable housing, demanding better schools and fighting for environmental justice.
LaDon is a new advisory board member of the Leadership Learning Community and Vice-chairwoman of the Algebra Project’s Board of Directors. The Algebra Project seeks to impact the struggle for citizenship and equality by assisting students in inner city and rural areas to achieve mathematics literacy. She attended Hunter College in New York where her course work included studies in African Spirituality in the Diaspora, African American History, Poverty in the US and Community Organizing.
