Our People - Leading Change Network

Mais Irqsusi

Executive Director

Mais Irqsusi

Executive Director

A seasoned leader, organizer, and educator with 14 years of experience founding and growing community organizing initiatives across the Arab world and Europe. She has coached over 20 campaigns, led 100+ workshops, and co-founded Ahel and Raneen. Within LCN, Mais offers global insight, new campaigns, seeding experience, strategy, and program design—always innovating how leadership practices help organizations drive positive change and adapt the organizing framework to their unique contexts.

Sachiko Osawa

Head of Programs

Sachiko Osawa

Head of Programs

Sachiko is an organizer, coach, and trainer based in Sweden, originally from Japan. She has spent over a decade applying and teaching LCN’s organizing and narrative practices. She co-founded Chabujo, an intersectional feminist grassroots group in Tokyo, and has led campaigns for gender equality and coached youth leaders across Japan. At LCN, she designs and facilitates learning spaces that draw on the collective wisdom of the global organizing community.

Alyssa Constant

Finance Lead

Alyssa Constant

Finance Lead

Alyssa holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Accounting from The University of Texas, Austin. She specializes in managing the finances of small to mid-sized private companies and nonprofits, providing reliable outsourced accounting services. Known for her precision and accessibility, Alyssa is a trusted partner for organizations, ensuring their books are well-managed and their toughest accounting questions are answered with clarity and confidence. In her spare time, Alyssa is a voracious reader and ambitious traveller.

Pilar Garza

Office Manager

Pilar Garza

Office Manager

Pilar supports the LCN team across scheduling, communications, tech, and day-to-day management. With a background in Journalism and Media, she’s inspired by the power of stories and enjoys working alongside people committed to creating change. Her role focuses on strengthening internal systems, supporting events and communications, and offering the behind-the-scenes coordination that helps the team stay connected and supported.

Jafrin Akhtar

Social Media Coordinator

Jafrin Akhtar

Social Media Coordinator

Jafrin has strengthened, mentored, and collaborated with multiple youth-led movements advancing social justice and leadership in India. She carries a passion to engage with the complexities of relationships, hegemony, and power. At LCN, she’s the social butterfly—managing communications, hosting gatherings, and conspiring with the Liberation Organizing for Palestine group. Rooted in her political education and lived realities, Jafrin strives for a world built on people power, community care, love, friendships, and relational health.

Sawsan Ahmad

Community of Practice and In-House Academy Coordinator

Sawsan Ahmad

Community of Practice and In-House Academy Coordinator

Sawsan is a feminist organizer, facilitator, and educator. An organizer at heart and a strategist in practice, she is passionate about leadership development journeys rooted in political awareness and collective action. Bridging theory and practice, Sawsan coordinates LCN’s community of practice as a reflective space that grounds visions of liberation in the everyday work of building power, trust, and accountable movements, while also coordinating LCN’s in-house academy offerings for fiercer leaders and greater justice.

Haruka Sano

Resource Center & Learning Partnerships Lead

Haruka Sano

Resource Center & Learning Partnerships Lead

An experienced organizer, coach and trainer in Japan, Haruka finds deep joy and passion in supporting and working alongside others to build people power toward a just world. At LCN, Haruka is committed to making the Resource Center more accessible, diverse, and member-led, enabling organizers in various regions and languages to learn, practice, and share the craft of organizing. She also enjoys meeting teams and organizations from around the world to seek collaborations to level up their work.

Sakher Ghaben

Data Analytics Specialist & Tech Support

Sakher Ghaben

Data Analytics Specialist & Tech Support

Sakher brings expertise in technology, data analysis, and data management. With a strong IT foundation and passion for optimizing processes, he strengthens our digital infrastructure. From troubleshooting issues to managing LCN’s data systems and generating insights, Sakher thrives on implementing innovative solutions that enhance efficiency, reliability, and impact, helping our community leverage technology and data to advance its mission.

Marshall Ganz

Senior Lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School

Marshall Ganz

Senior Lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School

Ganz teaches leadership, organizing, narrative, and strategy. After leaving Harvard in 1964 to join the Mississippi Summer Project, he spent 16 years with César Chávez and the United Farm Workers, later pioneering voter mobilization strategies. Returning to Harvard, he earned an AB, MPA, and PhD. Author of People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal (2024) and Why David Sometimes Wins (2010), Ganz helped design Obama’s 2008 grassroots campaign and continues to train organizers worldwide.

Samar Dudin

Regional Director & Head of Programs at Ruwwad

Samar Dudin

Regional Director & Head of Programs at Ruwwad

Dudin is a pioneering cultural and social activist who has advanced youth leadership and community organizing across Jordan and the Arab region since the 1990s. A leader in Drama and Theatre in Education, she founded Takween Open Spaces in 2006 and created innovative, arts-based educational initiatives for children, youth, and caretakers. A theatre director, Ashoka Fellow, and former Amman City Council member, she coaches youth movements on public narrative, campaign organizing, and building community power.

Andrew Manuel Crespo

Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Andrew Manuel Crespo

Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

Crespo teaches criminal law and procedure at Harvard Law School and also serves as the Executive Faculty Director of the Institute to End Mass Incarceration. His research focuses on the institutional design, legal frameworks, and power structures of the American penal system, as well as on the relationship between lawyers, organizers, and social movement actors in effecting transformational change. Through his leadership, Crespo develops modes of legal practice that integrate lawyers into organizer-led anti-carceral movements.

Junko Yoda

Organizing and Public Narrative Coach and Trainer

Junko Yoda

Organizing and Public Narrative Coach and Trainer

Junko is a leadership coach and community organizer who has trained civic leaders across Japan and Southeast Asia. She co-founded CLinked to equip community leaders advancing gender equality and climate justice, and is a founding member of Community Organizing Japan, which has trained over 4,000 people in organizing practices nationwide. She has served as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and holds an MBA from Columbia University.

Kathryn Perera

Senior Consultant at The King's Fund; Associate with Cultivating Leadership

Kathryn Perera

Senior Consultant at The King's Fund; Associate with Cultivating Leadership

Kathryn helps people find sources of courage, clarity, and connection in their public work. She is a facilitator, educator, and coach. Kathryn started her career as a barrister at 11KBW Chambers. She was later awarded a US–UK Fulbright Scholarship to study leadership and organizing at Harvard University. For the past two decades, she has worked across law, politics, campaigning, and healthcare, supporting people and teams to lead with more intention and impact.

Mariali Cárdenas

Founding member of Vía Educación

Mariali Cárdenas

Founding member of Vía Educación

Mariali is a founding member of Vía Educación (2005), a nationwide nonprofit organization based in Mexico. With a Master’s from Harvard Graduate School of Education, her work has included expanding educational opportunities for children of marginalized communities. She specializes in understanding how people can work together to use their freedom to transform the conditions that affect them into opportunities for growth to create a more human community.

LCN Global Roots

LCN Global Roots is an ever-evolving collaboration of organizations around the world, united by the belief that building real people power starts locally. This space is designed for LCN-affiliated organizations that are seeding, scaling, and adapting the People, Power, Change framework in their unique contexts—helping changemakers strengthen their leadership capacity, expand civic engagement, and drive locally-rooted change.

Forming a global canopy of interconnected roots, these organizations share experiences, nurture resilience, and evolve and innovate on leadership practices. Since our in-person convenings—2012 in Boston, 2015 in Serbia, and 2025 in Mexico—Global Roots has brought together leaders from diverse countries and organizations to connect, learn, and strategize. Together, members build organized people power locally while contributing to a global movement for freedom, justice, equity, and collective action.