Our Team

Rachel O’Leary Carmona

Executive Director

Rachel O’Leary Carmona is the Executive Director of Women’s March and Women’s March Network that form the backbone of the largest political home for women and most effective base building organization on the left.

Rachel served as the Chief Operating Officer of Women’s March from 2018, transitioning to the Executive Director role in 2019. She oversaw building the infrastructure of Women’s March as an organization from a series of record-breaking mobilizations. Rachel oversaw the incorporation of Women’s March Network, the sister organization of Women’s March, and founded Women’s March WIN, a Super PAC that builds and mobilizes the political power of women. 

Under Rachel’s leadership, Women’s March drove record turnout in 2018, playing a key role in defeating Trump in 2020; anchored 4,500 nationwide actions in the United States, mobilizing tens of millions in 2022; and mobilized women in a pivotal 2023 Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, a race that was called the most important of the year by the New York Times.

Rachel has been quoted and featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Guardian, CNN online, Rewire, Fox Online, and the Journal of Transformational Work and many other national and local outlets. She is a frequent media contributor and is regularly featured on outlets including MSNBC, CNN, CBS, NBC, Reuters, NPR, and other broadcast news and radio stations. 

Rachel earned her Associate’s degree from Madison Area Technical College. She went on to earn her Bachelor’s degree in African American Studies from the University of Wisconsin and her Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where she focused on leadership development and non-profit management. She sits on the advisory boards of the Wisconsin Union, and the 22nd Century Initiative. She lives in Amarillo, Texas. 

Tamika Middleton

Managing Director

Tamika Middleton

Tamika is the Managing Director of Women’s March. She is an organizer, doula, midwifery apprentice, writer, and unschooling mama who is passionate about and active in struggles that affect Black women’s lives. Tamika has organized for abolition, reproductive justice, and for domestic workers’ rights. She is a consultant with Winds of Change Consulting, and a founding member of the Metro Atlanta Mutual Aid (MAMA) Fund and JustGeorgia. She serves as a Community Advisory Board member of Critical Resistance, a Leadership Team member of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective and as treasurer of OHRD.)

Kelsey Jackson

Chief Financial and Administrative Officer

As Chief Financial and Administrative Officer, Kelsey is responsible for all of the company’s financial functions, including accounting, audit, and finance. She also oversees and manages all human resources and administrative activities. Her career spans more than 25 years of experience in financial management, business leadership, and strategic planning.
Before joining Women’s March, Kelsey served as the Director of Finance of CALMRA, a nonprofit that served people with cognitive disabilities.
Earlier in her career, Kelsey held various positions in commercial banking companies, including Kislak National Bank/Popular Bank and Mellon United National/ Bank/Sabadell United Bank.
Kelsey is skilled in financial management, nonprofit administration, fiscal reporting, financial audits, and human resources. She is also an energetic team player and a leader who collaborates with others to accomplish any goal. She is adept in strategic planning and reducing corporate outlay.
Kelsey graduated from the University of Maryland University College, earning her bachelor’s degree in Business Management with a minor in Business Administration. She lives in Maryland but is originally from Alabama and moved to Florida in her teen years.  She is married and has two children.

Amanda Chávez Barnes

Senior Director of Programs

Amanda Chávez Barnes is a Southern Chicanx organizer and mami of twins. A neuroqueer Atlanta native with deep roots in dissonant dimensions, Amanda is a hybrid being who resides in the interstitial spaces of technologies and cultures. Much like a ghost. Although Amanda prefers to self-describe as a goddess or cyborg, or both, depending on the mood. Amanda is curious and passionate about mothering, building power in cyberspace, crafting, and imaginary worlds. Some of Amanda’s previous roles include Digital Director at Mijente, Deputy Director & National Membership Director at the US Human Rights Network, field organizer, and middle school teacher.

Aquib Yacoob

Director of Special Projects 

Guided by Paulo Freire’s “Pedagogy of the Oppressed,” Aquib S. Yacoob is a community organizer and “fixer” utilizing the arts and culture as vehicles to (re)claim power in communities oppressed by difference.

Yacoob is a 25 years old queer Muslim immigrant from Guyana, South America. A first generation college student, and a graduate of Colby College, Yacoob’s study spanned the globe examining the intricacies and intersections of community health, identity, human rights and social movements.

Yacoob launched #BrownManRunning, a social change strategy firm, at age 24, after working at Amnesty International for 10 years.

Kim Parker Russell

Creative Director

A survivor of gun violence, Kim Russell was moved to advocate for commonsense measures to reduce gun violence in America after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. In 2012, she helped to launch a national grassroots organization – Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America – which quickly became a leading voice of reason in the gun violence prevention movement. Kim has also worked with Brady United Against Gun Violence as an organizing manager and every other year co-produces Fun Lovers Unite — a night of comedy and music to raise gun sense awareness and funding. After the 2016 election Kim began working with Women’s March to tackle intersecting issues impacting women and families. She currently serves as their director of campaigns where she inspired youth to lead Enough! National School Walkouts that saw 1.6 million students walk out of schools demanding safety from gun violence. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, Kim is a mother of two living in Brooklyn, New York with a background in graphic design.

Selene Urquidi

Executive Assistant

My name is Selene Urquidi. I am a 26-year-old, hard-working, driven, passionate, and fiery goal-oriented Latina. I strongly believe in working hard to reach the goals that you have set forth for yourself. I have been working since I was 13 years old when I would dis-infect bounce houses for $7 dollars an hour. My parents are both Hispanic immigrants who have done their absolute best to give my siblings and me fulfilled lives. I was born in Dodge City, Kansas but raised in Texas. I am a first-generation college graduate from West Texas A&M with a bachelor’s degree in business administration with a focus in HR. I have 4+ years of business administration experience. In my free time I like to hang out with friends and family, especially my eight nieces and nephews. I am a newly converted and practicing Catholic.

My hobbies include swimming, partaking in all kinds of sports, and anything that has to do with being outdoors. I love animals and aspire to have my own farm one day. I am currently working for the Women’s March as the executive director’s assistant where I will bring a fresh perspective to the organization. I am excited to grow and learn as I take on this new journey in my professional career.

Tiffany Flowers

Board Chair

Tiffany Flowers is a social, economic, and racial justice movement leader currently serving as the Director of The Frontline. Previously, Tiffany served as the Organizing Director at United Food & Commercial Workers Union, Local 400. During her tenure at Local 400, she played a lead role in unionizing Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign staff and negotiating their historic contract. Tiffany has spent almost two decades organizing and activating thousands of working people across the public and private sectors. Tiffany is also a music aficionado. In her spare time, she pursues her passion as DJ Searchlight.

Shawna Knipper

Board Secretary

Shawna Knipper entered into organizing, facilitating, and educating around substance use/abuse awareness, disability advocacy, and women’s rights over 20 years ago. Her deeply personal journey has taken her into political and social justice arenas, lobbying for meaningful structural change in governance as well as the minds and hearts of communities.

Shawna is a DEI professional who has provided education to diverse groups of youth entering the medical field, coordinated and developed JEDI education and planning of structural change for large networks, and co-facilitated environmental justice groups in base building and striving for more profound views on equity and justice. Her electoral experience ranges from leading field campaigns for United States Representative seats to leading a virtual field program that contacted over 5 million women in one weekend. She led 20 million women in a single electoral season to register and move other women to the polls, creating a surge of women voters.

Noor Mir

Board Treasurer

Noor Mir is a DC-based organizer and facilitator with a passion for facilitation, direct action strategy and training and is a partner at DC Action Lab, a worker-owned collective. At the Women’s March, Noor manages the Digital Defenders Program that has trained hundreds of activists in combating bigotry and intervening in disinformation online. Born and raised in Islamabad, Pakistan, Noor moved to the United States in 2008 to attend college at Vassar, where she interned at the African American Policy Forum to create popular education programs on structural and institutional racism. Noor became politically active through the movement to ground lethal and surveillance drones while doing research on the topic back home in northern Pakistan. Noor then led the Ground the Drones campaign at the anti-war organization CODEPINK: Women for Peace, where she organized with the families of survivors and victims of drone strikes from Yemen and Pakistan. She then worked as a field organizer and then as a national campaigner for police accountability and criminal justice at  Amnesty International, focusing on state and federal advocacy on lethal force and data collection and reporting and coordinated the first international human rights observer deployments to Ferguson and Baltimore in her time at the organization. Noor has been a partner at the worker-owned collective, DC Action Lab for the past four years, where she has led on campaign strategy and rapid response design with a plethora of people-powered movements such as the No Muslim Ban Ever Campaign, Home is Here and Firedrill Fridays. Noor currently serves on the Board of the War Resisters League and is the co-chair of Collective Action for Safe Spaces. Noor also serves on DC’s Mayoral Advisory Committee Against Street Harassment. Noor lives in DC with her husband and two cats. 

Tamara Cohen

Board Member

Tamara Cohen is a rabbi, writer and educator whose work focuses on lgbtq, feminist and anti-racist transformation within the Jewish community and on engaging Jewish youth in movements for social justice. She is the VP of Program Strategy at Moving Traditions. 

Sharon Groves

Board Member

Dr. Sharon Groves joined the Auburn Seminary staff in August 2015 as Vice-President for Partner Engagement.  In this role she regularly engages with hundreds of movement and faith leaders, organizers, policy makers, and philanthropists who work at the intersection of faith and justice. Sharon leads projects at Auburn that address community thriving; national and state level collaborations on inclusive democracy; reproductive health, rights and justice; reparations; and LGBTQ equity. She serves as a key liaison with major policy and movement partners, including the Women’s March, the Center for American Progress, and national faith denominations, as well as regional and local congregations.  Prior to joining Auburn’s staff, Sharon was a Senior Fellow for Auburn Seminary. She is the former Director of the Religion and Faith (RFP) Program at the Human Rights Campaign, where she worked from 2005-2014. Under her leadership, Sharon doubled the RFP staff, built a scholarship and mentorship program for LGBTQ religious scholars, and oversaw statewide faith organizing efforts in Oregon, Illinois, Rhode Island, Maine, Maryland, and Washington State. She also supported the creation of multiple theologically grounded resources, including the lectionary-based preaching guide, Out in Scripture, and the Latinx curriculum and film, A La Familia. Sharon received her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Maryland in 2000 and has furthered her theological education through extensive coursework at Chicago Theological Seminary, Wesley Theological Seminary, and the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation. 

Isa Noyola

Board Member

Isa Noyola is deputy director at Mijente, a political, digital, and grassroots hub for Latinx and Chicanx organizing and movement building. Launched in 2015, Mijente seeks to strengthen and increase the participation of Latinx people in the broader movements for racial, economic, climate and gender justice. Isa also works extensively for the release of transgender women from ICE detention and an end to all deportations and mass incarceration.She is apart of the advisory boards of Familia:TQLM, BreakOUT,  El/La para Translatinas, and the International Trans Fund. Isa identifies as a translatina activist and cultural organizer and is passionate about abolishing oppressive systems that criminalize trans and queer immigrant communities of color.

Chi-Ante Singletary

Board Member

Chi-Ante Singletary (she/her) is the Chief Reparations Officer for Cypress Fund and the Grove by Cypress Action Fund. She is a proud scholar of color and queer black feminist. She attended Spelman College for her undergraduate degree, where her love and respect for Black women blossomed into a career focused on creating and supporting Black liberation spaces globally. Chi-Ante has worked as a southern organizer and donor strategist for many organizations including Solidaire Network, Youth Engagement Fund, Girls Inc., and Neighborhood Funders Group. Through her work, Chi-Ante has supported communities of color across the South to have access to resources and develop strategies focused on building political power, making long-term systems change, and building transformative relationships between donors and grassroots organizers.