Raquel Laviña

Strategist + Facilitator

Raquel Laviña has over 25 years of experience in activism and organizing. As an organizer she focused on helping to build youth organizing as a discipline within a broader community organizing field. She served as the National Program Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, supervising 20 staff in 3 cities; the Executive Director of the Youth Empowerment Center, which housed 5 youth groups in Oakland, CA including SOUL, the School of Unity and Liberation, and as the Deputy Director of Social Justice Leadership, which supported groups in integrating analysis, organizing and personal transformation. For the last 10 years, she was honored to contribute her skills and experience to building the domestic workers movement, a movement that centers dignity and justice, by helping to build the National Domestic Workers Alliance’s (NDWA) leadership development programs and, for 5 years, as Deputy Director, during which NDWA doubled each year in size, reach and strategic impact.