Lori Wallach: Director, Global Trade Watch
Kate Alexander, Legislative Assistant/Scheduler
Kate Alexander is Global Trade Watch’s Legislative Assistant
and Scheduler. Previously, she was a Junior Jurisprudence Researcher at the War
Crimes Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where she conducted original
sentencing policy research and contributed to the final brief and closing statement
of a genocide case. As an undergraduate, she served on the core committee of an
inaugural festival of social justice at Brandeis University, won national
recognition as a lead organizer of Portland’s 2009 Stand Up for the Millennium
Development Goals event, and was a recipient of the David Alexander Memorial
Award for Social Consciousness and Activism. She earned a B.A. in
International and Global Studies and a Minor in Legal Studies from Brandeis
University.
Joseph Battistelli, Legislative Assistant/Intern Manager
Joseph Battistelli is Global Trade Watch’s Legislative Assistant and Intern Manager. Prior to joining Global Trade Watch he was volunteering at Kids In Need of Defense, working on the Guatemalan Child Return and Reintegration Project. In past positions he has taught English abroad, worked on Capitol Hill, and was active in the 2008 presidential campaign. He earned a B.A. in Politics and a Minor in Philosophy from Earlham College.
Ben Beachy, Research Director
Ben Beachy is Research Director with Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch. He investigates the impacts and implications of U.S. trade policy on jobs, public interest regulation, financial stability and democratic policymaking. Before joining Global Trade Watch, Beachy analyzed the impacts of U.S. trade, aid, and lending policies in Latin America for six years as a Nicaragua-based policy analyst and as a D.C.-based National Organizer for Witness for Peace. He has also worked as a visiting research fellow with Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute, investment analyst for the Tellus Institute in Boston, agriculture researcher for ActionAid in India and labor rights investigator for the Worker Rights Consortium in Central America. Beachy’s published articles have focused on post-food crisis trade policy, the impacts of U.S. and IMF policies in Latin America and new economic indicators to supplement GDP. Beachy received a B.A. from Goshen College and a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Jessa Boehner, International Program Associate
Jessa Boehner is International Program Associate for Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, where she assists the international campaigns director with GTW’s international program work. She first joined Global Trade Watch's full-time staff in July of 2011 as a Legislative Assistant/Scheduler. Previously, she coordinated a bilingual educational enrichment program in her hometown of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. As an undergraduate intern at Global Trade Watch, she had the opportunity to star in a video highlighting the issue of tax havens in Panama that was featured on the front page of The Huffington Post. Boehner has also volunteered with Fundacion Origen, an organization working in solidarity with the indigenous population in Puebla, Mexico. She earned a B.A. in International Studies and a minor in the Spanish language from American University.
Maggie Henderson, Communications Officer
Maggie Henderson is the Communications Officer for Global Trade Watch. Maggie joined GTW in March 2013 after spending the last year fighting back $40 million in dark money to help Senator Sherrod Brown retain his seat in Ohio as Deputy Press Secretary. She is a former Regional Communications Director for We Are Ohio, a coalition and grassroots-driven campaign to protect collective bargaining rights for public employees. Maggie got her start in TV, where she worked her way up from an intern to Executive Producer for WKBN/WYTV/WYFX in Youngstown, Ohio, covering everything from presidential campaign visits to the demise of the local steel mills. She earned her B.A. in History from Grove City College. An avid runner, Maggie is excited to put some miles on the D.C. area’s trails.
Steven Knievel, Program Associate
Steven Knievel is Program Associate for Public Citizen's Global Trade Watch, where he manages online communications and the website, performs press outreach and assists in development. Prior to joining Global Trade Watch in May of 2012, he worked with Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program where he collaborated with partners worldwide to expand access to medicines through use of pharmaceutical cost-lower measures. Knievel’s writing on Internet freedom in the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been featured on The Huffington Post. He has also worked with Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and taught English as a foreign language in Poland. He earned a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Colorado Boulder.
Lacey Kohlmoos, Senior Field Organizer
Lacey Kohlmoos is the Senior Field Organizer for Global Trade Watch. She has worked across the globe with talented and passionate activists from organizations that include the Tibetan Women’s Association, Coordinadora de Mujeres Campesinas de La Paz (COMUCAP), Women Thrive Worldwide, and the National Democratic Institute. Her initial interest in organizing and advocacy came while spending a year teaching elementary school English in a tiny town in Costa Rica where she leant a hand in organizing the community against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA). Immediately prior to joining Global Trade Watch, Lacey worked on the Obama Campaign as an Organizing for America Field Organizer in Pittsburgh, PA. She earned her B.A. in Drama and the Studies of Women and Gender from the University of Virginia and her M.A. in International Development from American University. Lacey loves to travel and will always make time to swap travel stories.
Melinda St. Louis, International Campaigns Director
Melinda St. Louis is International Campaigns Director with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, where she works with international allies to roll back WTO financial deregulation and to stop expansion of harmful trade agreements. Before joining Global Trade Watch, St. Louis was director of policy and campaigns for Jubilee USA Network, an alliance of 75 organizations dedicated to ending the cycle of crippling debts Africa, Asia and Latin America. She is the former executive director of Witness for Peace, a national grassroots organization that supports peace, justice and sustainable economies in Latin America and the Caribbean by challenging harmful U.S. military and economic policies in the region. As mid-Atlantic organizer for the Campaign for Labor Rights, she mobilized consumer campaigns in support of workers’ struggles in sweatshops across the globe. Ms. St. Louis has lived and worked in Nicaragua and El Salvador, and currently serves on the boards of the Latin America Working Group and Witness for Peace. She received an M.P.P. in International Policy and Development from Georgetown University.
Alisa Simmons, National Field Director
Alisa A. Simmons is the National Field Director for Global Trade Watch. She has worked on a range of social and economic justice issues, including global trade, worker's rights, student's rights, LGBT civil rights and voter's rights. Alisa helped organize anti-WTO meetings in Seattle in 1999 and joined an international group of activists to protest the World Trade Organization meetings in Prague in 2000. She has degrees and certificates in sociology, liberal arts, international conflict resolution and non-profit management but mostly credits her personal development and organizing success to the countless number of traditionally underrepresented and marginalized people who taught her what it is get up and fight every day. As a native New Yorker, Alisa has a fierce passion for jay-walking.
Bo Shuff, Deputy Director
Bo Shuff is Deputy Director with Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. His background is in both campaign and advocacy organizing, having spent most of the past twelve years working with both candidate and issue based campaigns at the local, state and federal levels. Prior to joining Global Trade Watch, Bo served as the Chief of Staff for Progressive Congress, the Foundation of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Before that, he served as National Field Director for FieldWorks Consulting, working on grassroots campaign support for progressive candidates and issues across the country. Bo also has served on the Campaign Board of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and is a present Board Member of the National Stonewall Democrats. Bo grew up in Orange County, California but has worked in a majority of the United States. Bo lives in Arlington, VA with his partner of 10 years and the cat that came as a package deal.
Lori Wallach, Director, Global Trade Watch
Ms. Wallach is Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch. Launched by Wallach in 1995, Global Trade Watch is a leader in the global citizen movement for fair trade and investment policy. Wallach has played an important role in the growing debate about the implications of different models of globalization on jobs, livelihoods and wages; the environment; public health and safety; and democratically accountable governance. Described as “Ralph Nader with a sense of humor” in a Wall Street Journal profile and dubbed “the Trade Debate’s Guerrilla Warrior” in a National Journal profile, Wallach has testified on NAFTA, GATT-WTO, and other trade issues before over 30 U.S. congressional committees, numerous other countries’ legislatures, the U.S. International Trade Commission and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. She has served as a trade commentator on CNN, ABC, CNBC, C-SPAN, CNBC, Fox, Bloomberg, PBS, NPR and numerous foreign outlets and been published and quoted in publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, Financial Times, The Associated Press, Los Angeles Times and more. Wallach has contributed to numerous anthologies on globalization and co-authored Whose Trade Organization? Corporate Globalization and the Erosion of Democracy (1999) and Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide to the WTO (2004), published by The New Press. Her most recent book is The Rise and Fall of Fast Track Trade Authority (2011). Wallach's work in "translating" arcane trade legalese – indeed, entire trade agreements – into relevant, accessible prose and connecting people's lived experiences with pacts' legal requirements has helped empower more diverse participation in trade and globalization discussions. In 1993, Wallach was a founder of the Citizens Trade Campaign, a U.S. national coalition of consumer, labor, environmental, family farm, religious and civil rights groups representing over 11 million Americans, and serves on its Board. Wallach, a graduate of Wellesley College and Harvard Law School, is a member of the Wisconsin bar. She was awarded Harvard Law School’s Kaufman Fellowship for Public Interest Excellence. Wallach previously worked on Capitol Hill, in television news and on electoral campaigns.
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