Thank you for an incredible Learning Exchange! We are deeply inspired by each and every one of you. This page will live on as a resource hub for those who attended the event. Please scroll on for some wonderful slide presentations, resources, graphic recordings, and photos.
We faced the difficult questions facing people’s budget campaigns together, sharing ideas on how to advocate for and win direct democracy over city budgets.
We charted a common path toward a PB research agenda that will enrich ourselves, our communities, and our field.
We learned from experts on how to incorporate the arts, culture, design, and fun into participatory democracy – and had a lot of fun ourselves!
We explored opportunities and examples of collaborative, youth-led decision-making in schools and beyond.
We challenged ourselves to imagine new and deeper ways of thinking about community safety and how to include the most excluded.
We shared critical tools for expanding participatory democracy, like power mapping and using data effectively.
We connected, re-connected, and built community together – over food, music, origami, buttons, yoga, and exploring our host city of Orange.
Thank you to Tamra Carhart for her incredible graphic recordings, Juan Perez for his amazing photography, and Cristal Jefferson for her excellent videography!
SESSION BLOCK #1
People’s Budgets Organizer Braintrust
This session builds on previous PBP-facilitated organized learning exchanges to solve key, recurring questions facing people’s budget campaigns, including: What are the mechanisms to enable more direct democracy over the city budget? How do we get city councilmembers, unions, and other key groups to work in a more participatory way? What messaging, engagement and education strategies are working to engage people in budget organizing?
Gabriel Cabán Cubero, People’s Budget Birmingham
Eliza Parad, Center for Economic Democracy, Boston Better Budget Alliance
Theo Pride, Detroit People’s Platform
Celina Su, City University of New York and NYC People’s Plan
Link to presentation slides
This interactive session will bring participatory budgeting (PB) practitioners and researchers together for two primary purposes: 1) to share key research findings and impacts of PB gathered from dozens of studies, and 2) to gather PB practitioners and researchers together to determine prioritized research questions for the North American PB Research Board.
Benjamin Goldfrank, Seton Hall University
Hillary Carelli-Donnell, The People’s Money
Mari Villa, Great Cities Institute
Priyanka Verma, University of Toronto
Cultivating Democracy with Arts and Culture
Link to Amalia’s slides
Link to Caron’s slides
Link to Damon’s slides
Further resources
Imagination is critical to creating the world we want to live in. Join us to discuss–and experience–how arts, culture, and design can play a key role in participatory democracy. What are effective ways of incorporating creative forms of engagement, and how do they make a difference in identifying visions for transformative change, shifting narratives, and activating people to participate?
Yazmany Arboleda, Peoples Creative Institute
Caron Atlas, Arts & Democracy
Amalia Deloney, Point A Studio
Damon Rich, HECTOR Urban Design
Session Block #1 Presenter Bios
People’s Budgets Organizer Braintrust [HALL]
Gabriel Cabán Cubero is a queer Latinx southerner born in Puerto Rico, raised in North Carolina, living in Alabama. Their passions are infrastructure development, data literacy in the Deep South, and community organizing and they are motivated by experimentation and power building. They serve as Executive Director at People’s Budget Birmingham an effort aiming to make participatory budgeting a cornerstone of municipal governance.
Eliza Parad is a 5th generation Bostonian and has been organizing there since 2009, especially around community control of resources and land. She joined the Center for Economic Democracy in 2022 where she coordinates the Better Budget Alliance, the coalition that won a ballot initiative for PB and now organizes for budget justice.
Theo Pride is a community organizer with Detroit People’s Platform, a social justice organization committed to building power for majority Black Detroit. His work focuses on equitable development and strategies to build and implement inclusive, collectively owned, solidarity economies communities of color. He leads the Detroit Budget Justice Coalition which seeks to win annually a municipal budget that invests in low income, Black neighborhoods and one designed through participatory decision-making by residents. Theo brings his unique experience as a teacher/researcher of black liberation movements and its impact on revolutionary politics and social change to inform his organizing work.
Celina Su is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, a former Senior Democracy Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and the recipient of a Berlin Prize in public policy. Her latest book is Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities, from Princeton University Press. Her other publications include Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University Press) and pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, n+1, and elsewhere.
Co-Creating a PB Research Agenda [SANCTUARY]
Hillary Carelli-Donnell is the Participatory Budgeting Director for The People’s Money in New York City as part of the Civic Engagement Commission. Prior to their work with the CEC, Hill was the Convener for the North American PB Research Board.
Benjamin Goldfrank is a professor at Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey. Ben has been a member of the North American PB Research Board since 2014 and has been studying participatory democracy in Latin America since the late 1990s.
Maribel Villa is a Master’s Student in Urban Planning and Policy and Graduate Research Assistant at the Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois Chicago. Mari is also currently co-facilitating the North American PB Research Board.
Cultivating Democracy with Arts and Culture [HALE HOUSE]
Caron Atlas is Director of Arts & Democracy, which cross-fertilizes arts and culture, civic participation, and community change. She is also Director of Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts NY (NOCD-NY), a citywide alliance revitalizing NYC from the neighborhood up, and teaches at NYU. Previously Caron worked at Appalshop; directed the American Festival Project, a national coalition of activist artists; and was Associate Producer at Dance Theater Workshop. She has consulted with Animating Democracy, Pratt Center for Community Development, Network of Ensemble Theaters, and several foundations. She was a member of the team for CreateNYC, NYC’s first comprehensive cultural plan, and has served on advisory committees for the NYC Civic Engagement Commission (Participatory Budgeting) and Narrative Power Network. Caron was a Rockefeller Foundation Warren Weaver Fellow and is a Coro Leadership NY alumnus. She received her BA and MA from the University of Chicago.
Damon Rich is a partner at HECTOR, an urban design, planning, and civic arts practice whose projects include a neighborhood park in South Philly, a housing crisis learning center at the Queens Museum, a Girl Scout Leadership Center in Newark, and a youth-centric neighborhood plan in Detroit. Damon is active with Newark’s United Parks As One (UPAO) and Newarkers Organized For Accountable Development (NOFAD) with South Ward Environmental Alliance and Clinton Hill Community Action. Damon previously served as planning director and chief urban designer for the City of Newark and is the founder of the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit organization that uses art and design to increase meaningful civic engagement. His work has been recognized by the MacArthur Fellowship, American Planning Association National Planning Award, Cooper Hewitt National Design Award, Loeb Fellowship in Advanced Environmental Studies, MacDowell Fellowship, and the International Architecture Exhibition in Venice.
amalia deloney, J.D., is a Guatemalan-born futurist, urbanist, and practitioner working at the intersection of foresight, design, and systems change. She is the founder of Point A Studio, a regenerative futures lab that partners with communities and mission-driven organizations to imagine and build futures worth inheriting. With over 20 years of experience across policy, philanthropy, and social change, amalia grounds speculative imagination in place-based practice—bridging neighborhoods, governance, and collective storytelling to seed just and regenerative futures.
Yazmany Arboleda is a Colombian-American artist, educator, and community organizer. Based in Brooklyn, he is NYC’s inaugural People’s Artist and founder of The People’s Creative Institute. His participatory projects across five continents transform public space into sacred ground for belonging, storytelling, and collective imagination.
SESSION BLOCK #2
Schools as Centers for Collaborative Governance
Link to presentation slides
Video on Co-Governance
The Six Key Practices of Co-Governance
Schools are vital parts of our community. But too often they have suffered under top-down decision-making and punitive approaches to discipline, marginalizing students, families, teachers and the wider community. New Jersey schools have begun implementing new models that center collaborative decision-making and build trust in their communities.
Philippa Rizopoulos, Partners for Dignity & Rights
Rosie Grant, Paterson Education Fund
Linda Reid, Paterson Education Fund
Gregory Stankiewicz, NJ Institute for Community Schools
Julie Larrea Borst, Save Our Schools NJ Community Organizing
Making PB Playful!
How can we bring joy, laughter, delight, play, creativity and elements of the unexpected into the practice of democracy? The NYC Civic Engagement Commission (CEC) will discuss and display our various public art pieces that are woven into our PB process, which draw people’s attention and put a smile on their faces. We will discuss how we transform public space through the use of the People’s Bus, our giant Sunny puppets, and Mama Sunny, our inflatable voting booth.
Wendy Trull, NYC Civic Engagement Commission
Benjamin Solotaire, NYC Civic Engagement Commission
Hillary Carelli-Donnell, The People’s Money
Yazmany Arboleda, People’s Creative Institute
Jessica Cortez, People’s Creative Institute
Tools for Accountable Development
Link to presentation slides
How can we democratize decisions about how towns and cities get built? Turns out most places in the United States have a 100-year-old system for residents to deliberate and decide how land and buildings where they live are designed and used— but today this system often doesn’t work well for those it was meant to serve. Join NOFAD to discuss the Development Watch model for building resident power in the real estate development process in Newark.
Asada Rashidi, Nii Abladey Otu, Damon Rich from Newarkers Organized For Accountable Development (NOFAD)
Session Block #2 Presenter Bios
Schools as Centers for Collaborative Governance
Philippa Rizopoulos is a fellow at Partners for Dignity & Rights, where she is part of the New Social Contract team where she works on co-governance as a strategy to build a multiracial democracy.
Rosie Grant is the Executive Director of the Paterson Education Fund (PEF), where she has given 28 years of educational leadership. Rosie has trained more than 500 students and adults to be workshop facilitators including Restorative Practices circle keepers, to support relationship building, reducing suspensions, and student social and emotional wellbeing. She is skilled at convening cross-sector partnerships for education and leading difficult public dialog, particularly in the areas of multicultural communications and anti-racism.
Gregory Stankiewicz is the co-Director of the NJ Institute for Community Schools and the statewide coordinator of the NJ Community Schools Coalition. He also serves as a lecturer for the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, where he teaches graduate classes in education policy and social justice.
Julie Larrea Borst is Executive Director of Save Our Schools NJ Community Organizing; Board President of the NJ Community Schools Coalition; Special Education Parent Advocate; and an education blogger who writes about special education, public education funding, and education policy. Her blogs have been reprinted in the Washington Post. She serves on the Special Education Steering Committee for BATs. Borst regularly provides testimony to the NJ Senate and Assembly Education Committees, to the NJ State Board of Education, and to the U.S. Department of Education. She holds degrees in Applied Sciences and International Marketing Management from Pace University.
Making PB Playful!
Wendy Trull, as Senior Advisor for the Civic Engagement Commission brings her years of experience in operations, strategic planning and budgeting to support the development and implementation of New York City’s Civic Engagement Commission’s (CEC) Participatory Budgeting program. With prior experience in supportive housing and community development, she has previously worked on the roll-out of large-scale city-wide initiatives, including the expansion of Universal Pre-K and served as a Senior Advisor for the Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services and staff member of the Young Men’s Initiative, launched to address racial disparities in the educational and criminal justice systems. She holds a Master’s Degree in Urban Policy from the New School for Social Research and is currently completing a Disability Studies program through the City University of New York (CUNY).
Yazmany Arboleda is a Colombian-American artist, educator, and community organizer. Based in Brooklyn, he is NYC’s inaugural People’s Artist and founder of The People’s Creative Institute. His participatory projects across five continents transform public space into sacred ground for belonging, storytelling, and collective imagination.
Hillary Carelli-Donnell (they/them) is the Participatory Budgeting Director for The People’s Money. Hill believes in leveraging the power of resident participation and creativity to build a more vibrant and equitable democracy. Prior to being hired as a PB Coordinator at the CEC in 2022 Hill facilitated Coro’s Youth Leadership Academy and published research on youth voice initiatives at the NYC Department of Education. Hill has also spent time working in youth mental & behavioral health, teaching Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and teaching youth boatbuilding at Brooklyn Boatworks. Hill holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Tulane University in New Orleans and an M.A. in Public Policy from the CUNY Graduate Center. Hill lives in Brooklyn.
Benjamin Solotaire, Community Board Advisor for the NYC Civic Engagement Commission, is long time Brooklyn resident living all around the Gowanus Canal. After a career in theater and event production Benjamin moved into public service after serving as an intern to Council Member Gale Brewer. His first job was with then Council Member Stephen Levin, D33 in Brooklyn. He served as his Community Liaison and Director of Participatory Budgeting for 6 years. He was a candidate for the District 33 Council seat when CM Levin was term limited. He is also active with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, Public Works (a project of the Public Theater), and the Parole Prep Project. He has two grown children, Anya and Matthew.
Jessica C. Cortez (she/her), People’s Creative Institute is a Chicana theatre artist, creative producer, and educator from San Diego based in Brooklyn. Jessica graduated from the CUNY School of Professional Studies MA in Applied Theatre program where she is now a faculty member. She currently works with the NYC Civic Engagement Commission as an Arts & Culture consultant.
Tools for Accountable Development
Asada Rashidi, a Newark native, has long been committed to advancing environmental justice in her community. Her early experiences with organizations such as Commercial District Services, the South Ward Special Improvement District, and the Student Conservation Association, along with her work at Newark City Hall’s Department of Sustainability, fueled her decision to pursue a degree in Environmental Studies at Spelman College, which she completed in just three years. Today, Asada serves as the Environmental Justice Organizer for the South Ward Environmental Alliance, leading grassroots campaigns on truck pollution, air quality, and accountable development. As Chair of the Newark Branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Environmental Justice Committee and former Co-Vice Chair of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Inaugural National Environmental Youth Advisory Council, she connects community-led advocacy to national policy conversations. Honored with the Young, Gifted & Green 40 Under 40 Award, Asada is dedicated to amplifying resident voices and building collective power to confront environmental racism.
Nii Abladey is a Construction Professional with over twenty years of experience in the residential and commercial design process; He was born and raised in Newark, NJ. He is a husband and a father of two and resides in the community of his youth. NiiAbladey has a long history of community involvement including being a former member of the Weequahic Park Association with Feldman Middleton, The Leadership Development Program with Junius Williams. Currently he works with Clinton Hill Community Action, where he serves as the Housing & Real Estate Development Manager alongside Khaatim Sherrer El and Janise Reliford-Afolo. In his role, NiiAbladey serves to educate residents in the Housing & Development process through the Development Watch program including but not limited to Zoning & Planning Board hearings and best practices to address blighted properties in the City of Newark. His involvement with South Ward Environmental Alliance (SWEA) and Newarkers Organized for Accountable Development (NOFAD) helps to broaden and deepen the reach of community advocacy and empowerment work. He also works to partner with small & medium sized Real Estate Developers to develop affordable housing units in the Clinton Hill community.
SESSION BLOCK #3
Participatory Democracy for Real Community Safety
Five years since the uprisings of 2020, how have campaigns on the ground engaged participatory budgeting and participatory democracy to re-envision community safety? Can democratic practices help communities to imagine solutions beyond the status quo of policing, ICE, and prison budgets? In this session, activists and practitioners share lessons, resources, tools from real-life campaigns for real community safety.
Devin Anderson, African American Roundtable Milwaukee, Megan Castillo, La Defensa and Reimagine LA, Andrea DaViera, Big Easy Budget Coalition and New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police, Erica Perry, Southern Movement Strategy, Celina Su, City University of New York and People’s Plan.
Transparency Toolkit: Demystifying City Budgets with Analytics and Visualizations
What do you do if your city government restricts your access to open source data? And what do you do when your city refuses to tell you what neighborhoods they invest in and why? You do it yourself! People’s Budget Birmingham’s session on Demystifying Data with Analytics and Visualizations tells the story about how over many months we constructed our response to our city’s lack of transparency.
Gabriel Cabán Cubero, People’s Budget Birmingham
Youth Lead the Way in Participatory Democracy
Link to presentation slides
A session for youth; led by Youth! Youth across our communities are consistently under-represented in decision-making processes that affect them. This is why we are curating this opportunity for youth to share and continue to advocate for participatory democracy practices such as Participatory Budgeting, Civic Assemblies and Youth Voting.
Martin Pacheco, Tucson, AZ, Budget de la Gente/Chicanos Por La Cause
Max Chang, Bend, OR, Civic Assembly
Anna Huang, NJ, Engagement Director at Vote16 NJ
Kalie Vo, Seattle, WA, PB – Youth team
Karol Wai, PB Oregon
Lillyanne Pham, PB Oregon
Session Block #3 Presenter Bios
PD for Real Community Safety
Devin Anderson is the African American Roundtable’s Campaign and Membership Director. Devin works to coordinate the LiberateMKE campaign. The campaign’s goal is to divest money from the police department and fund community needs. He has been on staff since March 2019. Prior to joining the African American Roundtable, Devin worked as field organizer for the Democratic Party in 2018. Devin graduated from Beloit College with a bachelor’s degree in Education and Political Science.
Megan Castillo (La Defensa and Reimagine LA) is a seasoned community organizer and policy advocate working at the intersection of public safety, budget justice, and community empowerment in Los Angeles County. With a focus on shifting narrative and policy, Megan Castillo has been featured in prominent media outlets including the Los Angeles Times, Spectrum News, KTLA, LA Public Press, The Progressive, Caló News, the Los Angeles Sentinel, and others, where she has elevated the voices of directly impacted communities and advocated for bold, community-rooted alternatives to incarceration. Megan is driven by a vision of collective liberation and grounded in values of love, freedom, and care. She is committed to building lasting systems of support led by the people most affected by injustice. Their work includes advancing participatory budgeting, coordinating grassroots coalitions, and holding local governments accountable to equity-centered public spending. Castillo has earned her Master’s of Social Work with an emphasis in Social Change and Innovation from the University of Southern California and her Bachelors of Arts in Psychology and African American studies from Loyola Marymount University.
Erica Perry is an organizer and movement lawyer from Nashville, Tennessee, committed to fighting for power with Black people and working-class communities in the US South. Erica has worked with organizers and advocates in Tennessee and nationwide to create alternatives to police and jails, organize for local budgets that invest in community-based resources, and build power. After graduating from East Literature Magnet High School, Erica studied political science and public administration at the University of Tennessee. She graduated from the University of Memphis School of Law in 2016 and is licensed to practice law in Tennessee. Erica returned home in 2019 and co-founded the Black Nashville Assembly and Southern Movement Committee to focus on participatory democracy, the abolition of the prison industrial complex, and youth organizing. In 2015, while in law school, Erica co-founded the Official Black Lives Matter Memphis Chapter (BLM Memphis). While a member of BLM Memphis, Erica organized to end money bail and pretrial detention, led the Black Mama’s Day Bail Out campaign, and co-founded the National Bail Out. In 2017, Erica became the assistant Partnerships Director at Law for Black Lives. While at Law for Black Lives, Erica provided legal and policy support to movement organizations focused on police and prison abolition campaigns and trained and organized lawyers to support base-building organizations. As Partnerships Director at Law for Black Lives, Erica was a coalition leader with the People’s Coalition for Safety and Freedom, managing the People’s Process for the campaign.
Celina Su is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, a former Senior Democracy Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and the recipient of a Berlin Prize in public policy. Her latest book is Budget Justice: On Building Grassroots Politics and Solidarities, from Princeton University Press. Her other publications include Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx (Cornell University Press) and pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, n+1, and elsewhere.
Transparency Toolkit: Demystifying City Budgets with Analytics and Visualizations
Gabriel Cabán Cubero is a queer Latinx southerner born in Puerto Rico, raised in North Carolina, living in Alabama. Their passions are infrastructure development, data literacy in the Deep South, and community organizing and they are motivated by experimentation and power building. They serve as Executive Director at People’s Budget Birmingham an effort aiming to make participatory budgeting a cornerstone of municipal governance.
Youth Lead the Way in Participatory Democracy
Karol Wai is a first-generation immigrant who believes in the power of youth voices and choices to develop equitable solutions. She is a MD candidate and attributes her experiences growing up in an underserved community, as the catalyst for her passion. She champions Youth Voice Youth Vote, Oregon’s first-ever participatory budgeting process.
Anna Huang is a current high school Junior in the Hunterdon County Biomedical Sciences Academy program. She is the Engagement Director for Vote16NJ and has been involved in the organization for close to a year and a half now. She is the child of two Chinese immigrants.
Kalie Vo is an undergraduate student studying education and public policy at the University of Washington. After being a youth fellow in 2022 for Seattle’s $27M PB process, they went on to support youth development with the vision of thriving communities, working in schools and for community-based organizations.
Lillyanne Pham (LP) is an artist and cultural organizer in so-called Portland, Oregon. LP moves between murals, digital media, community archives, and long-form research, with a focus on nesting and remapping. Their first large-scale project was Youth for Parkrose. Their second project was co-organizing with Oregon’s first youth-led participatory budgeting project, YV^2.
Martin Pacheco is a recent graduate from the department of education at the University of Arizona. He is passionate about community education and increasing accessibility in institutions that have historically marginalized folks of color. For the last 3 years he has been involved with Budget de la Gente, Arizona’s first municipal participatory budgeting process.
Max Chang is a high school junior from Bend, Oregon. As a 17-year-old, others often find it strange how engaged he is in politics. “My family has always focused on how our government can best serve its people,” This political passion has manifested itself through his participation in the 5-day civic assembly process.
SESSION BLOCK #4
Power Mapping 101: Informing Action strategies
Link to presentation slides
Power lies at the center of all fights for justice, and it is an important goal of community organizers to empower those who have been historically and systematically disempowered. This workshop focuses on power mapping as an analytic tool to understand power and consider how to shift power dynamics. The workshop includes hands-on activities to define power, power maps a local social issue, and concludes with discussion on how power mapping can inform action strategies.
Andrea DaViera, Big Easy Budget Coalition and New Orleans for Community Oversight of Police
School PB: Accomplishments and Challenges
This session will be interactive with group discussion and sharing of experiences. Participants will join four small groups, each one addressing a challenge: inclusion, steering committee formation, pedagogy, and evaluation. Who should participate in school PB: only students or adults as well? How should the steering committee be formed? How to maximize the pedagogical impact of School PB? How should the evaluation data be collected? Participants will share their ideas, and the facilitators will offer concluding remarks.
Tara Bartlett, Arizona State University
Sabrina Estrada, Arizona State University,
Daniel Schugurensky, Center for the Future of Arizona
KaRa Lyn Trasher, Center for the Future of Arizona.
More than a Budget: Building Advocacy with PB Seeds
Imagine that you were accepted into our amazing program where you will learn PB and how to build advocacy campaigns around it. Can you figure out how to promote PB? Can you build a coalition based on shared values and advocating for not getting a program but designing a democracy. Join us for an activity and discussion on the PB Seeds Program.
Nisha Thompson, Participatory Budgeting Project
Session Block #4 Presenter Bios
Power Mapping 101: Informing Action Strategies
Andrea DaViera (she/her) is a community psychologist, community organizer, and educator who received her PhD from the University of Illinois Chicago in 2024. She has two broad and intersecting areas of research inquiry. First, Andrea seeks to use research to demonstrate the links between structural racism and interpersonal violence, including how systemic oppression creates the conditions for violence to be prevalent. Second, her research focuses on how to design and carry-out systems-level anti-racist social change, with a focus on anti-racist youth organizing. Andrea applies a wide range of research methods to achieve these aims, including quantitative, qualitative, and community-engaged, all of which are informed by a critical anti-racist perspective. She leans on readings from critical race theory, anti/decolonial theory, Black feminism, to guide her scholarship and activism. In addition, Andrea has more than seven cumulative years of experience as a community organizer where she worked with a diversity of student and community organizations in Chicago. She has experience as a college-level instructor and has also received accolades for her participatory and student-focused teaching. For fun, Andrea paints, cooks, and spends time with her fiancé and family.
School PB: Accomplishments and Challenges
Tara Bartlett is a Clinical Assistant Professor at Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. Her research and teaching interests focus on public policy and democratic innovations, particularly among youth and within school communities. Tara draws upon frameworks of citizenship education, school democracy, and participatory governance and utilizes methods such as community-based research (CBR) and participatory action research. Tara’s focus on these areas is driven by her experience and passion for integrating opportunities for youth and families to participate in school community decision-making processes, policy creation and adoption, and community empowerment initiatives. Before pursuing a doctoral degree, Tara was a teacher for 14 years in Title I middle schools. Through various education leadership roles, she has been integral in developing and providing training for social studies standards and district curriculum, elevating civic learning initiatives, and facilitating professional development opportunities for fellow educators. These experiences, coupled with the observed outcomes of civic action and student voice within the classroom, led Tara to reimagine how K12 schools can better equip youth with the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices to become political and civic changemakers within their own communities for the long term. Additionally, Tara has experience working on both small and large-scale civic education projects in Arizona, across the US, and internationally. Tara serves as Co-Director of the Arizona Civic Coalition and has been integral to the expansion of the proven practices of civic education in schools.
Sabrina Estrada has served her community as an educator, higher education administrator, and non-profit leader. As the Sr. Program Coordinator of Civic Health at the Center for the Future of Arizona, Sabrina is part of a dynamic team working to strengthen civic engagement and empower Arizonans to shape their communities and the future of the state. In this role, Sabrina also supports the development and implementation of the School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) initiative, helping students strengthen civic skills and engage in meaningful shared decision-making. Prior to joining CFA, Sabrina served as Director of Community Engagement at Arizona Citizens for the Arts and taught music education in Tolleson, AZ. Her diverse professional background reflects her deep commitment to expanding access, elevating community voice, and creating spaces where all people can engage in shaping the systems that impact their lives. Sabrina holds a bachelor’s degree in music education and is pursuing a Master of Public Policy from Arizona State University.
KaRa Lyn Thrasher (she/hers) is a community builder passionate about shaping inclusive, connected, and resilient individuals, organizations, and communities. Her professional experience includes supporting higher education, non-profit, and civic-minded organizations, highlighting skills in facilitation, program design, and project management to empower people and build capacity. As the Civic Health Project Manager, KaRa Lyn supports the execution of initiatives to improve Arizona’s civic health, including the statewide expansion of the School Participatory Budgeting (SPB) process, providing an opportunity for students to “learn democracy by doing.” Having lived in many places, KaRa Lyn quickly called Arizona home after relocating with her husband in 2021. She has a master’s degree in organizational leadership from Arizona State University and a bachelor’s degree from the University of West Georgia.
Daniel Schugurensky is Professor at Arizona State University, with a joint appointment in the Schools of Public Affairs and Social Transformation, and an affiliated appointment with the College of Education. He is the Director of the Participatory Governance Initiative (PGI), the chair of the Graduate Program of Social and Cultural Pedagogy, and the coordinator of the Certificate in Social Transformation. Before joining ASU, he worked at the University of Toronto, the University of California (Los Angeles) and the University of Alberta (Canada). He has been a visiting professor at universities in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, El Salvador, Japan, France, Malta, Mexico, Spain and United States. Daniel has published widely on citizenship education, adult education, social pedagogy, higher education, democratic innovations, cooperatives and community economic development, among other topics. His recent authored or co-edited books include Educating for Democracy: The Case for Participatory Budgeting in Schools (Edward Elgar, 2024), Global Citizenship Education and Teacher Education: International perspectives and practices (Routledge, 2020), By the People: Participatory Democracy, Civic Engagement and Citizenship Education (PGI, 2017), and Paulo Freire (Bloomsbury, 2015). Currently, he is interested in the connections between citizenship education, civic engagement, and participatory democracy. He has been involved with the Participatory Budgeting Project (PBP) since its beginnings and serves on its research board.
More than a Budget: Building Advocacy with PB Seeds
Nisha Thompson is a community organizer who has extensive experience building movements to increase government transparency using open data, community engagement, and policy advocacy. A NJ native, she worked locally and nationally in the US and in India bringing people together to work on improving the relationship between citizens and government. Her passion is working with volunteers, demystifying complex processes, and engaging people in innovative ways. She is joing PBP as the NJ Advocacy Manger for the Seeds program which aims to build PB demand all over the state.
