Staff

Bill O’Brien Director/Co-founder  

Bill has a total of 31 years of organizing experience.  He is also Director of Community Partnerships at Southwest Solutions, a 340-staff agency that provides mental health services and community development in Southwest Detroit.

He directed/consulted with 17 community organizing projects in MI-OH-PA-WV-NY for the Gamaliel Foundation.  He founded and directed The Jeremiah Project in SW Detroit which won campaigns on local blight and safety, neighborhood barriers along freeways, land acquisition for construction of 60 new homes.  He was founding director of MOSES, a 3 county urban/suburban organization, which held a 5000 person Public Meeting in 2002 with the new Governor, 2 US Senators, 4 congressional representatives and 20 mayors to win on “Fix It First” urban revitalization and Regional Mass Transit. 

He has conducted national training for community organizers and community leaders at local, state and national levels (and in Romania).  He has conducted workshops at University of Michigan on community organizing, empowerment, coalition-building, leadership development.  Bill speaks Spanish fluently.  He has traveled extensively in Central America, India and Romania. 

Other work experience includes parish or neighborhood centered community organizing (incl. anti-gang violence); directorship of Jesuit Volunteer Corps Midwest and the Metro Welfare Reform Coalition; teaching at high school and college levels; founding director of Chicago Catholic Worker Soup Kitchen; founding director of MICAH Michigan Interfaith Committee for Central American Human Rights. 

His education includes BA from Univ. Detroit, MA (English Lit) from Boston College, Masters of Divinity (Loyola Chicago). 

Joe Rashid

Onjila Odeneal

 

 

 

 

Molly Sweeney

 

 

Justin Erickson

Jamila Martin

Branden Snyder

Ted Jones

Helen Lee

Tianna Cook