Staff and Consultant Bios

Arif Mamdani, Executive Director

Arif Mamdani became PTP’s Executive Director on February 1, 2009. Arif brings exceptional expertise, commitment, and passion to this position. For over a decade he has worked with community organizing groups to help them gain the skills and vision to use technology more effectively to advance their goals.

Arif joined the PTP staff in 2003 as our Capacity Building Program Director at a time when PTP was known primarily as a re-granting organization. His thoughtful program development combined with his pedagogical skills helped guide our transition to an organization focusing on training and technical assistance.

Under Arif’s leadership PTP has developed our signature training programs -- the Community Organizing and Technology Institute COaTI, and TechCamp (including one held solely in Spanish) – as well as individual trainings designed to significantly deepen skills in areas like databases and voter data integration. Arif is a well liked and respected facilitator who led more than sixty training events in the last five years.

Prior to joining the PTP staff, Arif worked as a Circuit Rider at the Low Income Networking and Communications (LINC) Project at the Welfare Law Center. At LINC, Arif worked with welfare rights organizers to identify and implement technology to support and enhance their organizing campaigns.

After graduation with a degree in Sociology and Political Science from Drew University, Arif worked as an adult education teacher at a number of organizations in New York City. At one time or another, Arif has taught ESOL, beginning reading, math, writing, and GED classes. In his last teaching position, Arif coordinated the writing program at the Fortune Society, an organization in Manhattan that provides services to people coming out of prison as well as people in alternative to incarceration programs.

Arif recently served as co-chair on the board of the Headwaters Foundation. He is currently a member of Asian Americans in Philanthropy.

With parents from India and Tanzania, he is the first member of his family to be born in the United States. Arif’s passions include his wife, two daughters, and two cats. He commutes by bike most of the year and is known among a small, but discerning, circle for his bread baking skills which include a sourdough starter that recently celebrated its two-year anniversary.

Brendan Smith, REVERB CRIB Notes, New York, NY

Brendan Smith, a consulting partner with the Progressive Technology Project, is a journalist and labor activist. He is co-founder of Global Labor Strategies, co-director of the UCLA Law School’s Globalization and Labor Standards Project, and a founding member of the Labor Network for Sustainability.   He has worked previously for Congressman Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — both as campaign director and staff on the U.S. House Banking Committee — as well as a broad range of trade unions, grassroots groups and progressive politicians. He is a graduate of Cornell law school.

Brendan work with PTP includes working with groups into improve social networking, voter engagement, and strategic communications skills. He currently works on PTP's REVERB and Census Projects and runs the CRIB Notes blog.

Jan Adams, VOTER Project, San Francisco, CA

 

 

 

 

 

Josué Guillén, PowerBase Coordinator

Josué started doing social justice work when he participated in the Center for Third World Organizing's organizer training program. That led to jobs with SEIU (locals 1877 in San Jose and 14 in San Francisco), PUEBLO in Oakland, and the Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union (after merging with the Ladies Garment Workers Union, ACTWU became UNITE) all over the country.

Josué spent two years with IGC - the Institute for Global Communications, where he ran the LaborNet website, helped unions take advantage of technological advances and helped the staff form a union with SEIU Local 790. Additionally, he was a founding member of PODER, a community organization doing work on environmental and economic justice issues in San Francisco's Mission District, and is a current board member of IMC - the Institute for Mass Communications.

In February 2001, Josué joined Media Jumpstart, a non profit worker collective (whose name later changed to May First Technology Collective) dedicated to supporting the technology needs of small non profits in New York City. When that project was shut down in May 2005, it merged with People Link to form a membership based Internet company striving to build a technology infrastructure to support the creation of real social change. Josué is on the Leadership Committee of that venture, named May First/People Link.

Josué was the Technology Manager for The Praxis Project from 2006-2009. Along with elevating the technological infrastructure of this national intermediary, Josué supported the work of many groups across the country. Additionally, he built two web based tools: the HealthJustice ReportCard and the Detention Watch Network's Detention Centers Map.

Josué served on the PTP board from 2008 to 2009.  He has been instrumental in kicking off PTP's PowerBase Project since he started as PowerBase Coordinator at PTP in late 2009. 

Laura Gaitàn, Office and Financial Manager

Laura has managed logistics and accounting at PTP since 2003. She has extensive experience in bookkeeping, financial management, customer service and logistics. She worked as the accountant/bookkeeper at the Resource Center of the Americas, in the accounting and payroll department at the University of Kansas Medical Center, and threw bags and performed customer service for an airline.

Laura helped lead her Resource Center co-workers in forming a 25-member unit of the Newspaper Guild, part of the Communications Workers of America. She served on the unit's three-member negotiating committee, which won the first labor contract at the Resource Center in 2002. She is still active at the Resource Center as part of El Centro de Derechos Laborales and is helping to organize “Mujeres Trabajadoras”, a group of latino women organized in order to be self sufficient with livable wage jobs. Each year during tax time, she volunteers her services in the Latino community to teach them how to file their taxes.

She is responsible for coordinating and managing PTP’s day-to-day administrative operations, providing financial oversight, day-to-day bookkeeping activities, human resources, assisting grant-making activities and planning, coordinating, and implementing logistics for events.

Her interests include competitive bicycle commuting, unions, social change, diversity, running and softball where she plays with her favorite team RMS (Reduce Military Spending). She speaks Spanish and English fluently.