Staff Members

Bill O'Brien

Executive Director/Co-founder

Email: wobrien@swsol.org

Bill has a total of 31 years of community organizing experience. In addition to being the Founder and Director of the Harriet Tubman Center, he is currently the Director of Community Partnerships at Southwest Solutions, a 340-staff agency that provides mental health services and community development in Southwest Detroit.  Bill's work in Southwest Detroit was featured in an LA Times article. Click here to read the article.

Prior to founding the Harriet Tubman Center, Bill was the Mid-East Regional Director for the Gamaliel Foundation from 2003-2008, working with 17 community organizing projects in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In 1993 he founded the Jeremiah Project in Southwest Detroit and Downriver and in 1996 he created the MOSES organization, a large 3 county urban/suburban faith based community organization in Metro Detroit, which he directed until 2004. He has conducted many leadership trainings and workshops for community organizers, students and community leaders at the local, state, national and international levels.

Bill speaks Spanish fluently and has traveled extensively in Central America, India and Romania. His education includes a BA from Univ. Detroit, an MA from Boston College and a Masters of Divinity from Loyola Chicago.

Luke Allen

Community Organizer - Metro Coalition of Congregations

Email: luke.allen@tubmanorganizing.org

Luke Allen grew up in the small town of Bear Lake, in rural northwest Michigan.  He attended Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste Marie Michigan where he ran Track and Field and studied Political Science and Evolutionary Psychology. 

Graduating in 2009, he comes to the Tubman Center after a year of service with City Year Detroit, where he led a team of 8 young adults who tutored and mentored students full time in a middle school on the east side of Detroit.  In his spare time, he enjoys running, watching and participating in sports, reading, and jumping off of things into water.

Sarah Craft

Community Organizer - YOUTH VOICE

Sarah Craft received her B.A. in English Language and minors in French and Sociology in April 2009 from Eastern Michigan University. In college, she spent many summers in Europe where she traveled and studied French. Sarah also traveled in Peru and through the United States.

Sarah now lives in Southwest Detroit where she is an intern with the Harriet Tubman Center. With the organization, she is developing and working with new Youth Voice and Our Kids Come First chapters in the city. Sarah also tutors for the Detroit Reads Program at the Detroit Public Library and works part time at a downtown restaurant.  

Vanita Mistry

Online Organizer

Email: vanita.mistry@tubmanorganizing.org

In 2009 Vanita trained to be a community organizer at the Harriet Tubman Center working on school based initiatives in Southwest Detroit.  Currently, she is a Community Resource Coordinator for Southwest Counseling Solutions’s Early Childhood and Family Literacy program and an Online Organizer for the Harriet Tubman Center.  Vanita graduated in 2007 from the University of Michigan with a B.S.E. in Mechanical Engineering.

Ginger Dowdle

Fellow Community Organizer - Battle Creek

Email: gingerdowdle@gmail.com

Ginger Dowdle grew up in Battle Creek, Michigan and attended Kellogg Community College.  In 2001, she  obtained a certificate in transportation relocation and then in 2009 she also received certificates in: Front line Services and Customer Relations.

Before joining Tubman, Ginger began grassroots organizing as a member of the Woman’s  Co-op in Battle Creek, Michigan.  She still continues to organize and volunteer with the Woman’s Co-op because she believes everyone, including her, must get involved to make the world better.

Ginger also enjoys spending time with her family especially her son.  All of her organizing and volunteering is to show her son that people must get involved to make the world a better place with the motto “one person, one place at a time”.