We are never as knowledgeable individually as we are together. Please see our team of speakers covering all our campaign issues and more.
Danaka Katovich
As CODEPINK's co-director, Danaka is a leading voice against U.S. military intervention, advocating for divestment from weapons manufacturers and challenging the Pentagon's growing budget. Her ability to connect with youth and grassroots activists makes her a go-to speaker on the impacts of U.S. foreign policy.
Her writing has been featured in Jacobin, Common Dreams, Truthout, Salon, and L.A. Progressive. She's also appeared on The Hill's Rising, Empire Watch, and Breakthrough News to discuss antiwar policies with other experts. She has spoken at major peace conferences, including the American Muslims for Palestine Gaza Conference and the United National Antiwar Coalition Conference. Her work brings a deeper understanding of the connections between U.S. foreign policy, social justice, and peacebuilding.
Articles:
- Our Feminist Future Must Include a Liberated Palestine | Common Dreams
- The Government Should Cancel the F-35 Program and Replace It With Nothing
Webinars/TV Appearances:
Jodie Evans
Areas of expertise:
– China
- Feminist Foreign Policy
- Local Peace Economy
Jodie is co-founder and board member of CODEPINK and has been a peace, environmental, women’s rights and social justice activist for fifty years. She has traveled extensively to war zones promoting and learning about peaceful resolution to conflict. She works locally to have governments, universities, churches and pension funds divest from war and to cultivate local peace economies through engagement with those who have felt the violence of the war economy locally and who have the vision for the future humanity and the planet need.
Contact: [email protected]
Medea Benjamin
Areas of expertise
- Afghanistan
- Cuba
- Iran
- Latin America
- Ukraine
Medea is a co-founder of CODEPINK and the fair trade advocacy group Global Exchange. She has been an anti-war activist for several decades and is the author of various books including Drone Warfare and Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.–Saudi Connection. In 2012, Medea was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation’s Peace Prize; she is also the recipient of the 2014 Gandhi Peace Award and the 2010 Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
Contact: [email protected]
Nancy L. Mancias
Areas of expertise
- BlackRock
- Divest (weapons manufacturer stocks)
- Ground the Drones (U.S. drone program)
- War is Not Green (climate and militarism)
- Iraqi Kurdistan
Nancy has worked for over 15 years in the non-profit sector, focusing on social services, social justice, and theater. She is CODEPINK's coordinator for its War if Not Green campaign and a doctoral student in Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Nancy she holds an MBA from Dominican University of California and a BA in Drama from San Francisco State University.
Contact: [email protected]
Marcy Winograd
Areas of expertise:
- Call to Disarm (Nuclear Proliferation and Disarmament)
- Cut The Pentagon (NDAA, military spending)
- Ukraine/Russia/NATO
- Militarism/Climate Crisis
Marcy is a long-time anti-war activist and has served as a 2020 DNC delegate to Bernie Sanders and co-chairs the foreign policy team for Progressive Democrats of America. A member of Veterans for Peace’s Climate Crisis and Militarism Project, Marcy blogs about militarism and foreign policy. Her writings are featured in San Jose Mercury News, Antiwar.com, Responsible Statecraft. Presenza, CommonDreams, CounterPunch, and more.
Contact: [email protected]
Michelle
Areas of expertise:
- Latin America
- Venezuela
Michelle was born in Venezuela and holds a bachelor’s degree in languages and international affairs from the University La Sorbonne Paris IV, in Paris. After graduating, she worked for an international scholarship program in Caracas and Paris and was sent to Haiti, Cuba, The Gambia. Subsequently, she worked with community based programs designed to promote productive endeavors in Venezuela and then served as an analyst of U.S.-Venezuela relations. Michelle is a Latin America campaign coordinator at CODEPINK.
Contact: [email protected]
Grace Siegelman
Areas of expertise:
- Feminist Foreign Policy
- Prison and police abolition
– Intersection of abolition and divestment
- Transnational feminisms
Grace is a Women's and Gender Studies graduate student at DePaul University. Her organizing and research focus on prison and police abolition, gendered violence and anti-war efforts. She is CODEPINK's Feminist Foreign Policy coordinator.
Contact: [email protected]
Tim Biondo
Area of expertise:
- Digital media management in movement work
Tim holds a bachelor’s degree in Peace Studies from The George Washington University. Their studies centered around critically understanding questions of peace, justice, power, and empire. As a student, they organized against war, imperialism, and settler colonialism through political education, protest, art, and writing. Tim is CODEPINK’s digital media manager.
Contact: [email protected]
Nour Jaghama
Areas of expertise:
- Palestine
- Iran
Nour graduated from DePaul University with a bachelor’s degree in International Studies in June 2022 and has been a passionate advocate for Palestinian liberation for over 5 years. Her extensive experience includes organizing within her university and addressing related issues, such as abolition. She has also contributed thought-provoking articles to Jacobin and Common Dreams, where she eloquently discusses the US Supreme Court's prioritization of Israel's interests over the First Amendment and the challenges of democracy coexisting with apartheid.
Contact: [email protected]
Jasmine Butler
Area of expertise:
- Antiwar Organizing and Movement Work
Jasmine is a captivating Black queer writer, cultural worker, and afrofuturist-abolitionist who specializes in collective liberation through mutual care and education. As a seasoned network weaver, educator, historian, and archivist, Jasmine brings a unique blend of principles and experience to the forefront. With a deep commitment to fostering meaningful change, Jasmine's journey is marked by their dedication to dismantling barriers and building bridges. Having earned a B.A. in Geography from Dartmouth College in 2021, Jasmine combines academic insight with grassroots wisdom, offering a dynamic perspective on the intersection of geography, culture, and activism.
Contact: [email protected]
Megan Russell
Area of expertise:
- U.S. - China Affairs and Policy
Megan graduated from the London School of Economics with a Master’s Degree in Conflict Studies. Prior to that, she attended NYU where she studied Conflict, Culture, and International Law. Megan spent one year studying in Shanghai, and over eight years studying Chinese Mandarin. Her research focuses on the intersection between US-China affairs, peacebuilding, and international development.
Contact: [email protected]
Aaron Kirshenbaum
Area of expertise:
- Intersection of Militarism and Climate Crisis
Aaron holds an M.A. in Community Development and Planning from Clark University. They also hold a B.A. in Human-Environmental and Urban-Economic Geography from Clark. During their time in school, Aaron worked on internationalist climate justice organizing and educational program development, as well as Palestine, tenant, and abolitionist organizing. They also worked on creating anti-Zionist Jewish communal spaces like those he grew up in, both on his campus and beyond. They continue to do this work nationally to combat militarized university repression and to try to produce new modes of solidarity.
Contact: [email protected]
Makayla Heiser
Area of expertise:
- Antiwar and Labor Organizing
Makayla graduated from Gonzaga University in December 2022 with a bachelor's in Political Science and double minors in Critical Race Theory and Women's and Gender studies. This introduced her to understanding how the system manipulated identities to divide, instead of unite the working class. Through student organizing with United Students Against Sweatshops, she began to understand just how far US imperialism and the ruling class’s deadly antics reached while also discovering the global power of solidarity within the working class and the importance of collective liberation. Since 2019 She has been involved in the greater movement for liberation with a strong background in labor and global justice.
Contact: [email protected]
Ann Wright
Areas of expertise:
- Afghanistan
- Call to Disarm (weapons manufacturer stocks)
– Ukraine
- War Is Not Green (climate and militarism)
Ann Wright is a 29 year US Army/Army Reserves veteran who retired as a Colonel and a former US diplomat who resigned in March 2003 in opposition to the war on Iraq. She served in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia and Mongolia. In December 2001 she was on the small team that reopened the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. She is the co-author of the book "Dissent: Voices of Conscience."
Contact: [email protected]
Koohan Paik-Mander
Areas of expertise:
– War Is Not Green (climate and militarism)
- Call to Disarm (weapons manufacturer stocks)
Koohan Paik-Mander is a Member of the Board of Directors of World BEYOND War. She is also a board member of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, is part of the CODEPINK working group “China is Not Our Enemy,” and is on the advisory committee of the Global Just Transition project at Foreign Policy in Focus. She formerly served as campaign director of the Asia-Pacific program at the International Forum on Globalization.
She is co-author of The Superferry Chronicles: Hawaii’s Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth, and has written on militarism in the Asia-Pacific for The Nation, The Progressive, Foreign Policy in Focus, and other publications.
Contact: [email protected]