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Announcing the transition of our executive director
Our deepest gratitude to outgoing Executive Director Cindy Wiesner for her many years of steadfast leadership, strategic vision, and commitment to internationalist movement building.
Join us in welcoming Interim Executive Director Marcia Olivo and help us find our new executive director!
Quick links
- Searching for our next executive director
- Apply today
- Announcement from our outgoing executive director
- Message from our board chairs
Searching for our next executive director
Executive Director┃Remote
Applications due August 31, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. ET
GGJ is seeking a collaborative and practical leader with deep experience in transformative organizing and movement building, and who is grounded in grassroots feminism and internationalism. Our next ED will be a visionary, resilient, and strategic leader with the skills to foster alignment across the grassroots organizing sector, to build power, and to advance radical change. The successful candidate will work collaboratively with GGJ members to plan a strategy that leverages their sophisticated political analysis with practical on-the-ground experience.
Check out the job description in English and Spanish.
Apply today
Strategies for Social Change® LLC (SSC) is conducting the executive search and transition process for GGJ. SSC is a woman of color-owned, nationally recognized capacity building and leadership development practice dedicated to working with social justice organizations.
We are accepting applications until August 31, 2026, at 5:00 p.m. ET.
Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Asian Pacific Islander people, women, femmes, queer folks, trans, non-binary, and gender-expansive people are strongly encouraged to apply.
Announcement from our outgoing executive director
Dear members and supporters,
Over the last 20 years, GGJ has worked to cohere the grassroots organizing sector of U.S. social movements, in deep and genuine solidarity with many of you on Turtle Island and in the Global South. In that time, GGJ has blossomed into a powerful constellation of frontline power-building organizations at the intersection of climate justice, grassroots feminism, and demilitarization.
Today, GGJ is responding to the call to resist rising authoritarianism and imperialism. We see this as our mandate: to fight for the future of humanity and the well-being of the planet.
It is with deep confidence in this leaderful alliance that I am deciding to move on, after 19 years with GGJ — the last 14 of which I had the great honor to serve as executive director.
I am very happy to introduce Marcia Olivo, who will step into the Interim Executive Director role on July 1. She brings more than 20 years of experience in grassroots organizing and power-building and has served as GGJ’s Deputy Director of Strategy and Movement Building. Please make time to welcome and connect with her.
As I reflect on my time at GGJ, I am proud of so much. Some of my most inspirational moments include:
- Establishing our Berta Cáceres International Feminist Organizing School (IFOS), which has trained hundreds of feminist organizers from more than 58 countries and territories, and is launching a historic AFRO-IFOS with 150 organizers in Kenya this year.
- Co-organizing two U.S. Social Forums, which cohered over 20,000 people around the banner that Another World is Possible, and Another U.S. is Necessary.
- GGJ engaging in critical mobilizations and ensuring frontline communities led the historic People’s Climate Marches that brought forward the demands for climate, racial, and gender justice nationally and internationally.
- Developing a principled, politically rigorous anti-war grassroots and feminist flank that continues to mobilize against the genocide in Palestine, military aggression, and occupation all over the world.
- Training nearly 150 organizers from 26 GGJ member organizations in our historic Transformative Organizing School, co-hosted with our sister alliance Right to the City.
- And coordinating and cohering progressive-left forces to fight authoritarianism through GGJ’s leadership in national coalitions.
I’m proud of this truly inimitable alliance, bringing together over 60 multiracial, multisectoral, multigender, intergenerational, working class base-building groups under the shared framework of: No War. No Warming. Build a Feminist Economy for the People and the Planet. The work of our alliance, our members, and our national and international partners offers a beacon of light in these uncertain times.
While my role leading GGJ is shifting, I will remain a member of the grassroots movements we are building together locally, nationally, and internationally. I am committed to building transformative change in my future work. In this next period, I will take time to rest and reflect, and as a wise friend said, be in the discipline of stillness.
In the face of spiraling war and ICE attacks on our communities, GGJ continues to strengthen our movements, and collectivize and grow the power of our member organizations — a critical role in this time. We are training organizers to meet this moment and beyond through our Transformative Organizing and Feminist Organizing Schools, and with our popular vision of a People’s Care Agenda.
We are building movement coherence with national coalitions like the Rising Majority, the Organizing Revival National Networks, and May Day Strong. And we are practicing solidarity with numerous international partners in the fight for global just transition policies and feminist economies.
Alongside our members, GGJ is led by an experienced and deeply aligned staff team. They are central to building our alliance’s strategy, relationships, and powerful impact. Our staff is stewarding this leadership transition alongside our board, with the support of Strategies for Social Change, a trusted firm that will conduct the search process for the new executive director.
Our comprehensive transition plan is grounded in the needs and aspirations of our organization, our members, and the communities we serve, and I will be advising Marcia in her role as the interim executive director for the first few months to ensure a smooth transition.
I want to personally thank you for your camaraderie and solidarity with GGJ and our work over the years. I ask for your continued support of the alliance to ensure our collective longevity. Amidst all the conditions and change, our members, staff, and board are ushering in a new season.
La Lucha Sigue,
Cindy Stella Wiesner
Outgoing Executive Director
Message from our board chairs
Dear Grassroots Global Justice Alliance (GGJ) community,
As GGJ members and the Chairs of the Board of Directors of Grassroots Global Justice Alliance and Grassroots Global Justice Alliance Action Fund, we extend deep gratitude from the board and membership of GGJ to Cindy Wiesner for her nearly two decades of service.
Cindy has been instrumental in the growth of the organization and the historic contribution GGJ has made to social movements here and globally. The alliance has strengthened our organizations’ bases, organizing skills, and strategy throughout her tenure. She has also built a leaderful organization ready to continue this critically important work along with our members and allies.
Through her leadership, GGJ introduced movements to key interventions in climate justice, grassroots feminism, demilitarization, and internationalist organizing. Cindy’s vision has steered GGJ in leading our sector and our allies in the work to block the consolidation of the authoritarian right, while continuing to build people power and movement infrastructure in these volatile times.
The boards are excited and grateful for the leadership of Marcia Olivo, who is stepping into the role of Interim Executive Director, and to the rest of the staff team who continue to implement GGJ’s programs. We are already executing a well-designed transition plan that includes the input of GGJ staff and membership, and Strategies for Social Change who is leading the search efforts for our new Executive Director.
This brings us to a request we have of you — we need your help to find our next leader. So many movement organizers have come from GGJ membership, and our work has touched countless communities all over the world. The work of GGJ is more crucial than ever, and we are counting on you to help us find our new ED.
Please share this position announcement broadly with your networks.
In gratitude,
Kandi White, Indigenous Environmental Network, GGJ Board Chair
Alma Santana, Mujeres Unidas y Activas, GGJ Action Fund Board Chair