Meet our coaches

Jake Schlachter is the founder and executive director of We Own It, an organizing nonprofit that supports member-owners to protect their democratically-owned electric utilities and credit unions from unscrupulous and self-interested takeovers by management -- "coup defense in small democracies" as I've been describing it this year.

I took my first two-day training in Public Narrative in 2012 and three-day training on the Ganz/LCN community organizing framework in 2013, and have been using both and training other folks on them ever since. At We Own It, we partnered with Leading Change Network from 2017 to 2020 to lead several nine-month national organizing fellowship programs modelled on Marshall's "Leadership, Organizing, and Action" remote course. In 2023 and 2024, I graduated from LCN's Public Narrative and Community Organizing Coaches Training Programs, which not only leveled up my training abilities, but also provoked me to start thinking deeply about how we welcome newcomers to the framework, and how our efforts to train organizers and coaches might be scaled up.

In February 2025, when Elon Musks's DOGE seized control of the US Treasury, I dropped everything to join current and former federal workers in defending our democracy from illegal destruction - "the coup in our big democracy." I've been organizing with and training civil service members since. The Democracy Teams Initiative was born out of partnership with organizers from USAID and the AmeriCorps alumni network to think about how to build organizing training infrastructure that the pro-democracy movement could then build on top of. I'd like to thank Lacey, Mike, Dominique, Randall, Jess, Blaine, Caitlin, Van, Ro, Kel, Laura, Amy, Shannon, Jeremy, Melanie, and many others whose collaboration and moral support made our first pilot happen and guaranteed that there would be a second.

Karen is a community organizer and coach with
more than a decade of experience coaching community
organizing workshops both in person and online for participants
in Europe and in Russia. She is a dual US and Swiss citizen
based in Geneva, Switzerland. She took a break from her work
as a simultaneous interpreter in Geneva in 2008 to return to the
US, where she worked as a Field Organizer for the Obama
2008 Presidential Campaign in Florida. Just a few years later
she was privileged to study the organizing framework that
underlay the campaign. She participated in the online
“Leadership, Organizing and Action” course with Professor
Ganz in 2012 while based in Moscow, and as a part of the
organizing campaign she co-created with young adults with
disabilities there, the “Theatrical Perspectives” program was
launched in 2012, providing young people with disabilities the
opportunity to learn the art of playwriting to find their public
voice, to experience and advocate for inclusion and to acquire
leadership skills.
In 2017, Karen served as a Global Coordinator for Women’s
March, working with a small leadership team online to organize
grassroots coalitions around the world. The result was a historic
global march of 5 million people on January 21 st , 2017,
promoting women’s rights as human rights and championing
the values of equality, diversity and inclusion. She has provided
community organizing coaching to NGOs in France,
Switzerland and Russia, and is proud to be a part of the DTI
project.

Khadija Amer is a Harvard-trained Public Narrative coach whose calling is helping people and institutions lead with dignity, purpose, and possibility. A former Teaching Fellow for Marshall Ganz, she now coaches students, nonprofits, activists, and professionals. She works in Higher Education Strategy in Lahore, Pakistan supporting reform across institutions and is co-founder of the Indus Conclave and Editor of Dunya Digital.

Lacey is a community organizer who began officially working on campaigns as an intern during the 2004 IL Senate primary, where her boss lost to a little known community organizer and State Senator named Barack Obama. Since then, she has been an Organizer, Compliance Manager, Campaign Manager, Training Director, and Caucus Director for the WV House Democratic Legislative Committee. She left the Caucus in 2021 to start working with Marshall Ganz on the Practicing Democracy Project at Harvard's Center for Public Leadership, where she led teaching teams and workshops in Organizing and Public Narrative.

Lacey has lived in big cities across the country, but her heart lies in the small towns of Appalachia. She loves working with organizers whose passion is making change at the local level, especially in rural places that are under-resourced and underestimated, like her home state of West Virginia.

When she's not teaching, training, or coaching community organizers, you might find Lacey taking a yoga class, reading with a cat or dog on her lap, listening to K-pop, or camping with friends.

Leandro started his career as a campaign strategist & political organizer in Argentina, where he studied political science & international relations. He is also a graduate of the LCN's Leadership, Organizing, & Action, and the Public Narrative Coach Training programs. He has worked with local governments, not-for-profits, and foreign missions, to create international exchange programs to support the development of young leaders from economically disadvantaged backgrounds through engagement in sporting activities.

Now he lives on Whadjuk Noongar country. Since 2023 he has been actively involved in campaigns for the recognition of First Nations sovereignty, like the Voice Referendum campaign in Australia and working as a member of the Mindeera Advisory Group at a local level. As a WA Labor and AMWU member, he has worked as a Field Organizer and Campaign Manager at the last State and Federal election campaigns, and was an elected Delegate to the party's State Conference.

Leandro is passionate about multiculturalism, social justice, & organized labour. His favourite thing about organizing is creating a strong sense of community, and coaching others to help them unlock their potential for relationship building.
When he's not organizing or coaching, he spends his time walking along the Derbarl Yerrigan (Swan River), or playing drums.

Maria is a storyteller, capacity builder and leadership coach. She has coached students at the Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Executive Education. Maria has trained organizers across the U.S. and Latin America through the Leading Change Network, where she also earned her Trainer-of-Trainers certification. She is building MarLo & Co., a consulting practice dedicated to helping mission-driven organizations and startups strengthen their narrative identity, leadership capacity, and community impact. Maria holds a Master’s in Theological Studies and certificate in Religion and Public Life in Organizing from Harvard Divinity School.