Board of Directors

Amalia Deloney
Jim Blaha, Board Chair
Niel Ritchie, Treasurer
Leone Jose Bicchieri
Edyael Casaperalta

Amalia Deloney is a Guatemala-born activist, cultural worker and former Senior Fellow with the Main Street Project. She is currently the Coordinator for the Media Action Grassroots Network (MAG-Net) for the Center for Media Justice. Amalia serves on the boards of The Headwaters Foundation for Justice, the Indigenous Women's Network, the Progressive Majority's Racial Justice Advisory, and the Media Justice Coalition. She has over 15 years of experience in community and cultural organizing, and in community education, with a focus on human rights and anti-racism education, cultural rights, the production of knowledge, and movement building.

Jim Blaha has more than 40 years of experience working in the human services nonprofit area. He is currently the executive director of the Community Action Center of Northfield, MN - a community human services organization serving low-income families and individuals. Prior to that, Jim was with Merrick Community Services and Ramsey action program in St. Paul, MN. He has served on the boards of many area non-profit organizations.

Niel Ritchie is a long-time rural advocate, and currently the executive director of the League of Rural Voters. Previously, he served as a policy analyst and national organizer at the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and prior to that as executive director of Minnesota PIRG and development director of the Rural Education Resource Center. He also helped found the Minneapolis-based Alliance for Metropolitan Stability. Niel currently serves on the board of the Jobs NOW Coalition, Rural Community Assistance Partnership, and on the political committee of Clean Water Action Alliance of Minnesota.

Leone Jose Bicchieri has almost 20 years experience organizing Latino and other immigrant workers. He is the executive director of the Chicago Workers Collaborative (CWC), a worker center which organizes low-wage workers to understand and fight for their rights. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Chicago-based Center for New Community. Leone has played organizing and leadership roles with Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, Interfaith Worker Justice, Oregon's Farmworker Union, known by its Spanish acronym of PCUN, and was an organizer for the Justice for Janitors Campaign with SEIU Local 1 and Witness for Peace in a rural war zone in Nicaragua.

Edyael Casaperalta is a program and research associate with the Center for Rural Strategies. She has worked with Llano Grande Center for Research and Development, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educational pursuits and community youth leadership, beginning when she was a sophomore at Edcouch-Elsa High School in Elsa, Texas. Edyael is one of four founders of the Llano Grande Center's Spanish Language Immersion Institute, and led several community-based initiatives in her rural South Texas hometown. Born in Mexico, she immigrated to the U.S. when 12 years old. Edyael received a B.S. from Occidental College in Los Angeles and a master's degree in Latin American Studies from Ohio University in Athens.