Who We Are At Maria's List
Maria Jobin Leeds
Chair, The Partnership for Democracy and Education
Maria Jobin-Leeds is the Chair of The Partnership for Democracy and Education, whose alliance of projects, partners, and staff includes: Access Strategies Fund, Maria’s List, the Schott Fund, When We Fight, We Win, and Impact Investments with the endowments. Together we support frontline organizations’ leadership and organize funders towards shared values and vision of a vibrant, thriving, and inclusive democracy and economy.
In 2000 Maria founded Access Strategies Fund to develop frontline movements to wield more power and help each community secure what they need to thrive, using our democracy. For 20 years, Access has helped develop movement work’s civic leaders, organizations, and public policies that build power and create justice framed around race, gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and immigration status.
After a decade of addressing the racialized gap in neighborhood voting rates, Maria noticed more diverse candidates winning public office. Even so, the rates of elected Women of Color were not adequate. Frustrated with the lack of women’s leadership in local, city, state, and national political offices, Maria collaborated with many politically astute leaders and Access Strategies Fund to incubate the Women’s Pipeline for Change. And then, in 2010, she created “Maria’s List,” combing the 50 States for champions who will win public office and promote bold social and economic policy, inclusive and representative of the communities most marginalized.
Maria’s List has a special focus on Massachusetts and the leaders we are developing here.
In 2005, staff at MassVote alerted me to the campaign by Sam Yoon for Boston City Council at Large. I remember the patient look on their faces as they watched me compute the concept that our funding and work expanding the electorate had reached the tipping point of impact. The more I thought about it, the more I realized Yoon’s victory was not only possible but it could be predicted.”
Sam’s victory, built on the shoulders of those who came before, signaled a change and opportunity for people of color to make impactful firsts in public life. Not only because they were people of color but because they discussed pressing issues and solutions for low-income communities and people of color. This was our victory too. Sam won the election because organizations like Access Strategies Fund and its many civic organizational partners spent years increasing progressive voter education and turnout.
The time had arrived for us to analyze the candidate development pipeline and recreate it intentionally to produce progressive low-income women from communities of color, too. We couldn’t wait for it to be “accidental.” Before they were candidates, I remember working with Ayanna Pressley, Sonia Chang-Diaz, and Kelly Bates to strategize funding for more BIPOC led civic organizations. At the time, there weren’t even enough black women leading civic and political organizations, never mind running. Our program was designed by 10 civic organizations who saw the need for the culture shift, the structural shifts to get more women from marginalized communities into public life, the Women’s Pipeline for Change. We developed our analysis, developed our skills, raised funds, developed leadership in civic organizations, encouraged each other to dream big, and celebrated the women on whose shoulders we stood.
Our first Women’s Pipeline for Change meeting was at the YWCA on Clarendon Street. Some of the most exciting executive directors and program directors, mostly women, attended. At every table, I could hear, “Oh my God, I’ve always wanted to meet you.” And realized we were so busy leading movements, creating change in our communities, raising families, and more that we lacked time to convene, dream, and co-create the civic structures we all need for a political system that would work for us!
Next up; Maria’s List, a legally separate candidate funding apparatus for those who declared their runs for public office. Initially, I kept a list of great candidates like Sam, Ayanna, Sonia that I kept hearing about; later, we went looking for them, making the list, sharing the list, making campaign contributions, and inviting others to contribute.
Maria’s List candidates were not initially popular with the political contributors, but times have changed; we are shifting the political culture and expectations and have expanded our donor groups. Now the candidates we list are better able to raise money, win office, take bold stances and lead. Our donors are savvier, have multiple sources of good information, and are backing some of the most progressive leaders from the municipal level right up the ballot to Congress. We provide our donors with researched opportunities on districts most likely to vote for progressive women and people of color that match their community’s needs. We call this Deep Democracy.
Wilnelia Rivera
Founder and Principal, Pronouns: She/her/hers, CV
A self-described strategic disruptor, she understands that in the world, country and at home are in transition and that the time is now to enable, inspire, and operationalize solutions to rewrite the American social contract for the 21st century. If we want a better future, we need to think and live beyond silos. We must participate in local planning and political processes that affect your everyday life and your future (or that of your children.) With action, comes change. With patience and strategy, change can occur at scale. Through effective policy, strategy, and engagement, Wilnelia’s work seeks to unlock hearts, hands, and minds of people and communities to advance individual empowerment and collective change. As principal she works with social change activists, planners, researchers, BIPOC, and TGNC communities across the country and at home focused on organizational development, research, strategic planning, coaching, and playbook making.
From leading statewide policy campaigns to reform the criminal record system to integrated voter engagement as well movement building candidate and issue campaigns, Wilnelia is a seasoned transformational consultant with the track record of success at the intersection of cross-sector collaboration, sustainability, and social change. By focusing on the nexus between people, planning, research and strategy, she has come to understand that the most important economic and social issues from race and class to the environment and education to transportation and health care are all interconnected. To make change from the street level to the ivory towers of the political and public policy making process, her career and academic preparation centers social justice and sustainability.
She holds both a B.A. in International Relations, B.A. in Women's Studies and an M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning from Tufts University, as well as a past Mel King Fellowship recipient at Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s CoLab, where she focused on public policy research related to urban politics, economic democracy, community planning, and sustainable community economic development. She is also a featured contributor to WBUR, GBH, the Boston Globe, and Boston Herald. Recently she co-authored a core chapter in Turnout! Mobilizing Voters in an Emergency (2020) called Rebuilding After COVID-19: Equality, Equity, and a Strong Social Safety Net and the firm’s data wizardry was also highlighted in Boston’s historic municipal and Mayoral Election (2022).
Jon Hillman
Senior Consultant & Researcher (he/his)
Jon Hillman comes to Rivera Consulting Inc. with a passion for understanding the intersection of policy, politics, and community engagement. He specializes in techniques of policy and program evaluation, survey design, project management, and both quantitative and qualitative research methods—all tools that ultimately promote sustainable, inclusive, and equitable community development.
After growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received his bachelor's degree in political science. Following graduation in 2007, he began a decade-long career in organizing for Democratic and progressive candidates. He worked on change-making campaigns throughout those years, be it the 2008 Presidential campaign of Barack Obama or the 2018 Congressional campaign of Ayanna Pressley.
This commitment to grassroots engagement techniques brought him to several distinct communities across Massachusetts and the United States. In this work he saw firsthand the deep inequities that pervade every facet of public life in America, from the rural post-industrial rust belt of northern Wisconsin, to the segregated exurban communities of Maryland, to neighborhoods across Boston left to fend for themselves after decades of underinvestment and policy choices rooted in a racist and inequitable status quo.
Seeing the possibilities of community-centered policy engagement inspired him to attend Northeastern University, where he received his Master’s degree in public policy in August of 2017. He has led on a diverse array of projects since joining Rivera Consulting in 2019, including an assessment of the Urban Land Institute of Boston New England technical assistance panel programs, national political research for Maria’s List, and the ongoing creation and evaluation of a Social Justice and Equity Analysis for PLAN: Newmarket with the Boston Planning and Development Agency. He is currently a resident of Somerville, Massachusetts with his wife Jen and chihuahua-terrier-brindle-weirdo mutt dog Hank.
Gina Christo
Senior Strategic Engagement Consultant (they/she)
Gina Christo is a political and communications strategist, expert grassroots fundraiser, and coach. Since 2019, she has brought her passion and humor to Rivera Consulting, forging the nexus of coaching, movement building, and politics. Originally from Quincy, Massachusetts, she left for Ohio to study Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at The College of Wooster.
Gina began her career in electoral politics, working as a Campaign Manager and legislative aide for Democrats in the Ohio House of Representatives. In 2016, Gina joined former Governor Ted Strickland’s Senate race as a Deputy Finance Director and raised nearly a million dollars from Central Ohio alone. After a devastating electoral year, Gina was brought on at EMILY’s List to travel the country to raise money from grassroots-level donors. It was there that she learned the power of connecting with individuals who are seen as modest donors, but have an untapped passion and commitment.
Gina returned to Massachusetts to serve as Ayanna Pressley’s Finance Director on her historic 2018 election. In addition to raising $1.3 million dollars without any corporate PAC money, Gina was an integral part of building and managing the full campaign staff. After the election, Gina joined Rivera Consulting as a Senior Consultant Associate, where she currently coaches individuals and teams in movement organizations, political campaigns, alongside a focus on the firm’s external communications. To date, Gina has helped raise over nearly $3 million dollars for women, women of color, and LGBT candidates and organizations in Massachusetts and South East United States who are committed structural change at all levels of government. Gina is a queer survivor who comes to this work with a passion for co-planting the seeds for deep democracy.
Will McArthur
Junior Research Consultant (he/his)
Will MacArthur is a Research Fellow at Rivera Consulting. As a life-long resident of Massachusetts, Will has seen how local, state, and federal policies reinforce structural racism and socioeconomic exclusion, even in places that espouse progressive values. He sees electoral power-building and policy research as two key elements of the fight for just policies in Massachusetts, and has worked for candidates and organizations dedicated to dismantling and transforming systems of oppression. He joined Rivera Consulting to support movement-building for justice in Massachusetts and beyond.
Will has worked for candidates fighting for housing, transit, and educational justice on the local and state levels. He recently served as Campaign Manager for Jen Fries in her 2020 campaign for State Representative in the 24th Middlesex District, and was Campaign Coordinator for Ayesha Wilson’s successful campaign for Cambridge School Committee in 2019. He also ran for Cambridge School Committee in 2017 on a platform emphasizing racial and socioeconomic justice in the schools.
Will also believes that researching the history and impact of policies can help inform movements for justice. In 2019, he prepared a report for the Office of Mayor Marc McGovern on the history of zoning as a tool of racial and socioeconomic exclusion in Cambridge. He has also researched housing and land use policy statewide as an intern with MassINC’s Transformative Transit-Oriented Development team and through his undergraduate honors thesis on Chapter 40B, in which he prepared in-depth qualitative and quantitative case studies on housing development in eight Massachusetts communities.
While Will believes that we cannot solve problems without structural transformation, he is also committed to direct services to meet people’s fundamental needs. He served as Staff Director, Finance Director, and Maintenance Director at the Harvard Square Homeless Shelter, the first student-run shelter for people experiencing homelessness in the United States, and has also worked as an intern at the food access non-profit Food For Free. These experiences reinforced his belief in the necessity of housing, food, and environmental justice.
Will is a proud graduate of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College with a degree in Social Studies and a secondary field in Global Health and Health Policy. In addition to his work at Rivera Consulting, he is currently pursuing an M.Sc. in Public and Urban Policy at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, meaning that he spends much of his time watching the Celtics blow 4th-quarter leads at 2am.
