Board of Directors

Mary Li | Portland, OR| Board Chair

Mary Li has been involved with Astraea since the early 90s when she served on the U.S. Community Funding Panel. Currently, she works for local county government on issues of housing and homelessness, poverty/prosperity and families and children. She is a Chinese-American lesbian parent, and is active in a number of communities and initiatives in the Portland area.

Michelle Kweder | Somerville, MA | Board Treasurer

Michelle Kweder is a not-for-profit consultant working in the field of social justice. She has worked on projects for affordable housing, high-quality urban public education, reproductive justice and racial equality. Michelle has over 15 years of professional experience, including as development director for two community health centers, as executive director at a domestic violence agency, and in the Boston Mayor’s Office of Intergovernmental Relations. Michelle currently works with her clients to facilitate processes of growth and change with an emphasis on practicality, cost-effectiveness and quantitative measures. A 2002 German Marshall Fund Fellow, Michelle’s focus has become increasingly global. She holds a BA from Hamilton College and an MBA from the Simmons School of Management, where she conducted research on issues faced by Iraqi LGBT people both at home and in exile and was the recipient of the SOMAA (School of Management Alumni Association) Principled Leadership Award which is awarded annually to a student who demonstrates superior competence and professional promise in principled leadership.

Miriam Zoila Pérez | Brooklyn, NY | Board Secretary

Miriam Zola Pérez is a Cuban-American writer, activist and consultant. She has been working in the reproductive justice movement for over seven years, both online and off, including more than five years working with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. She works as a consultant for NLIRH and other social justice non-profits, focusing on online communications. Pérez is the founder of Radical Doula, a blog that covers the intersections of birth activism and social justice from a doula’s perspective. You might also know her from her work at Feministing.com, where she has been an Editor for four years. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, RH Reality Check, Alternet and The American Prospect and she is a frequent contributor to Colorlines. Pérez’s work has appeared in a number of anthologies, including Click, Yes Means Yes and Persistence. She has received various awards and recognitions for her work, including a 2010 Barbara Seaman Award for Activism in Women’s Health from the National Women’s Health Network. For more about her work, visit miriamzperez.com.

Miriam Barnard | Brooklyn, NY

Miriam Barnard is the Director of Development at Democracy Now!. She has nearly a decade of experience in organizing, advocating, fundraising and strategic planning for a broad range of progressive and radical activist groups, whether small volunteer-driven actions, political campaigns, or established non-profit organizations. Previously, Miriam served as the Senior Director of Development at The Fortune Society, an organization advocating for deep change within the prison system. She also served as the Associate Director of Major Gifts at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and as the Director of Development at Wingspan, Southern Arizona’s LGBT Community Center.

Ileana Jiménez | Brooklyn, NY

Ileana Jiménez has been a leader in the field of social justice education for the past 14 years, and is the founder and sole blogger at Feminist Teacher. Ileana has been recognized for her work recently as the recipient of the Distinguished Fulbright Award in Teaching to conduct research in México on gender and education. In 2010, the Feminist Press named her one of their 40 Feminists Under 40, and in 2009, she was named one of the 40 Women of Stonewall by the Stonewall Foundation for her work in social responsibility, philanthropy and activism. Ileana frequently leads presentations at conferences for educators of color and is the founder of the New York LGBT Independent School Educators Group, providing educators professional development and networking opportunities. She holds a BA in English Literature from Smith College and an MA from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. She has served on Astraea’s board since 2005.

Alice Y. Hom | Los Angeles, CA

Alice Y. Hom is Alice is the California Partnerships Program Manager for the National Gender and Equity Campaign, a demonstration project for Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy. As a community builder, educator and writer, she brings over 17 years of experience in organizing and teaching on the intersections of race, gender and sexuality while also linking academic issues to community based activism. From 2001-2006, she served as the Founding Director of the Intercultural Community Center at Occidental College where she worked on diversity and social justice issues. Alice also serves on the board of Visual Communications, an Asian American media arts organization. She co-edited an award-winning anthology titled Q & A: Queer in Asian America. Alice received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale University, a Masters Degree in Asian American Studies from University of California, Los Angeles, and is completing her dissertation on organizing and community building by lesbians of color from the 1970s to the 1990s in a Ph.D. History Program at Claremont Graduate University.

Alexander L. Lee | Berkeley, CA

Alexander L. Lee currently serves as the Associate Director for Public Interest/Public Sector Programs at UC Berkeley School of Law. Prior to this position, Alexander founded and directed the Transgender, Gender Variant & Intersex Justice Project, a legal services and policy organization working to end the abuse of transgender people in prison in California and beyond. In this position, he worked closely with leading LGBT legal organizations, as well as racial and economic justice organizations, members of the California legislature and correctional agencies. He has also worked as a staff attorney at Justice Now, helping prisoners fight the termination of their parental rights and win competent health care for life-threatening conditions. He is also a founding member of the Transforming Justice Conference and Coalition, and a former member of the groundbreaking transgender police-accountability community organization TransAction (1999-2003). Alexander is a former Soros Justice Advocacy Fellow and holds a law degree from UC Berkeley School of Law.

Daniel Jae-Won Lee | San Francisco, CA

Daniel Jae-Won Lee is the Executive Director of the Levi Strauss Foundation. He joined Levi Strauss in 2003 as Community Affairs Manager for the Asia Pacific Division in Singapore, where he managed corporate social responsibility programs employee volunteerism and Foundation grantmaking in three global giving areas - HIV/AIDS, worker rights and asset building. Subsequently, he relocated to San Francisco and assumed the role of Director of Global Grantmaking Programs. Daniel has extensive experience with international non-governmental organizations in the fields of human rights, HIV/AIDS and social justice. He served as Senior Program Officer for Asia and Pacific at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) and on the founding board of the Massachusetts Asian AIDS Prevention Project. He is the Vice President of Funders Concerned about AIDS (FCAA), co-chair of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (AAPIP), and a member of the Asia-Oceania Advisory Council of the Global Fund for Women. He received an AB magna cum laude in Religion and History from Princeton University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard University. Daniel is a previous member of the International Grants Panel at Astraea.

Jarrett Lucas | New York, NY

Jarrett Lucas is Program Manager at Stonewall Community Foundation, overseeing initiatives in grantmaking, donor education, leadership development and capacity building. Prior to joining Stonewall, he was a nonprofit consultant, advising progressive groups on campaign management, branding and board governance. Jarrett also spent four years as the Director of Programs and Outreach at Soulforce, a national LGBTQ rights organization, as well as four years at the Bryson Institute, advancing policy and practice reform within institutions that serve LGBTQ youth. To assert community health as the best measure of equity, Jarrett has collaborated with many of Astraea’s grantee partners in the U.S. and internationally. His work has garnered three Congressional tributes from the U.S. House of Representatives and has been featured in several books and films, including:American Crisis, Southern Solutions: From Where We Stand, Promise and Peril; PBS’s Generation Next 2.0; and the award-winning documentary,Equality U. Jarrett completed a fellowship in Design and Illustration at Pennsylvania’s Governor School for the Arts and holds dual degrees in Architectural and Computer Engineering from Drexel University.

Cynthia Rothschild | Brooklyn, NY

Cynthia Rothschild is currently consulting in areas related to the United Nations, HIV & AIDS, women human rights defenders and sexual rights. A human rights and sexual rights activist for over 20 years, she is the author of Written Out: How Sexuality is Used to Attack Women's Organizing; the co-author of Strengthening Resistance: Confronting Violence Against Women and HIV/AIDS and Amnesty International’s Crimes of Hate, Conspiracy of Silence: Torture and Ill-Treatment Based on Sexual Identity. A trainer and former member of Amnesty International USA's Board of Directors, she is now on the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT Program. She has worked at the United Nations Development Fund for Women, and with a number of NGOs, including the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, in areas related to sexuality, women’s human rights, reproductive rights and HIV & AIDS. Her UN advocacy includes a focus on “gender architecture”, the UN Human Rights Council, the UN Commission on the Status of Women and various projects related to HIV & AIDS and rights of young people.