Leaders

Interim Executive Director, since Aug. 2022

We welcome back Myriam Hernandez Jennings, as the Interim Executive Director. She previously served as the Director of Policy and Organizing for MCDW. To her new role, Myriam brings more than two decades of experience working with organizations and coalitions to embed equity, inclusion and racial justice into their programmatic work to better engage and partner with those most impacted by oppressive systems.

Born in Chile, Myriam credits a cruel dictatorship with catalyzing her active and lifelong commitment to community organizing, power building, social, political, economic and racial justice, starting at the age of 12. Myriam is profoundly moved and influenced by Liberation Theology, and has more than 20 years of experience applying its theory in different sectors of the social justice ecosystem. This includes leading the Massachusetts Coalition of Domestic Workers, as the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Alliance on Teen Pregnancy, in her role as the Regional and National Director of several Women’s Health Projects at JSI Research & Training Institute in Boston, and being a board member of the feminist collective Our Bodies Ourselves where she edited the first Spanish edition of their best-selling guide to women’s health and well-being.

Myriam holds a Masters of Arts in Theology from Andover Newton Theological School, a certificate in Maternal and Child Health from Boston University’s School of Public Health, a Nonprofit Management and Leadership Certificate from Tufts University, and earned a Certificate in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from Bentley College.

Program Coordinator, since Jan. 2022

Phoebe is focusing on our Leadership Development program for worker leaders and new members.

She got her start as an organizer when she was an undergrad at Dartmouth College and organized other students to support campus workers as they renegotiated their union contract with the college.

Since then, she has spent the last ten years as a community organizer first with immigrant worker centers in New England and then with the national immigrant rights movement Cosecha.

With the worker centers, Phoebe organized against wage theft and other workplace abuses, learning how direct action campaigns and leadership development combined with legal strategies create powerful grassroots organizations to fight for dignity for immigrant workers. As a field organizer and part of the national coordination staff with Movimiento Cosecha, Phoebe brought her organizing experience to help build a national movement for permanent protection, dignity, and respect for all undocumented people.

Phoebe joins the staff at MCDW with a deep reverence for the labor of domestic work and a belief that worker organizing and movement building are key to changing our collective future and reclaiming our humanity for all of us. Also active in Jewish spiritual and social justice groups, Phoebe seeks to ground in where she comes from and connect across communities to rebuild a healthier world for us all. The other things that matter to her the most are hiking, connecting with the ancestors, reading novels, cooking dinner, following the moon, therapy, and dedicating a lot of time to the people she loves.

Communications Coordinator, since Dec. 2021

Lena is a mutual aid organizer in North New Jersey with a work background in libraries. They support revolutionary action and work towards building a world without racial capitalism, borders, gender based oppression, or prisons of any kind. They believe that a world where the dignity of every person is respected and everyone has access to everything they need to survive and thrive is possible.

Employer Engagement Volunteer

As a current employer of a housecleaner and having employed caregivers in the care of my parents, I believe it is my responsibility to make sure that these workers are treated with the same rights and fairness that any worker in any workplace should have.

I shared testimony in support of the Massachusetts Domestic Workers Bill of Rights in 2014, and became involved in the domestic worker initiative with the New England Jewish Labor Committee, also serving on their Board. I also served on the National Committee of Hand in Hand, a network of employers of nannies, housecleaners and home attendants working for dignified and respectful working conditions that benefit the employer and worker alike. I represented Hand in Hand on Capitol Hill in July 2019, advocating for the passage of the National Domestic Worker Bill of Rights.

(The fight continues - sign here to support the bill.)

As a career counselor who supports individuals as they seek meaningful and dignified work, as a Jewish woman who wants to live my values, as a community member concerned about the treatment of workers around me, and as a domestic employer, I am committed to volunteering at the Massachusetts Coalition of Domestic Workers and educating domestic employers like me about the rights of domestic workers - workers we engage with every day in our homes.