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Board of Directors

Sara Evans, Chair, is an award-winning feminist historian and activist who has worked for civil rights, unionization, and other progressive causes in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Chicago. Retiring in 2008 as Regents Professor at the University of Minnesota, she remains a board director of Grassroots Leadership. Her books include Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement & The New Left.

Becky Glass is Director of External Relations at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy (COWS) and the former founding Executive Director of the Midwest States Center, which built and strengthened progressive groups in the Upper Midwest. She has served as Midwestern Regional Field Director with the National Youth Project and as an energy planner for Chicago and Illinois. Her family runs a working farm in Wisconsin.

Gregory Gray, Treasurer, is Executive Director of the Minnesota Legislative Commission to End Poverty. A former State Representative, he is past President of the Minneapolis Library Board. A longtime leader in North Minneapolis, he has served as legal counsel for a major Midwestern agricultural cooperative and as a consultant to the Minneapolis Urban League and other groups.

Peggy Huppert is Governmental Relations Director for the American Cancer Society in Des Moines.   She has been executive director of Iowans for Sensible Priorities, the Iowa Chrysalis Foundation, the Iowa Hospice Organization, and her own former firm, Non-Profit Resources.   A former AP reporter and wire editor, she has directed communications and fundraising at several groups in Iowa. 

Dr. Andrea “Andy” McGuire is chief medical officer of American Enterprise Group, Inc. in Des
Moines.  In 2006, she was a Democratic candidate for Lieutenant Governor in Iowa, running with gubernatorial candidate Mike Blouin.  Previously, she was a staff physician at the Des Moines Veterans Administration hospital and focused on breast cancer, nuclear medicine, and public health.

Sheila Riggs, D.M.Sc., D.D.S., is Chair of the Primary Dental Care Department at the University of Minnesota.  An oral epidemiologist trained at Harvard, she has served as the CEO of Delta Dental of Minnesota, as an executive at the Wellmark Foundation, as chief of the Healthy Iowans 2010 program, as Chair of the Iowa Democratic Party, and as founder of the Ames, Iowa Free Dental Clinic.

Wesley Walker, Secretary, is Executive Director of the Northway Community Trust in North Minneapolis, which is creating wealth by strengthening groups in that predominantly African-American community. Previously, he has served with policy and organizing groups working on affordable housing in Chicago (LISC), Cleveland and Washington, D.C. (People’s Action), and with the Deputy Mayor of Washington, D.C.