Who We Are

DONATE
The Grassroots Leadership College is, at its base, a collection of community members, developing leaders, coaches, program alumni, volunteers, faculty members - the list goes on. The key factor that ties everyone together is that they all believe that we are all learners, teachers, and leaders. 

Staff:

Amy Mondloch, Executive Director

Amy is involved in just about every aspect of the College:  overseeing the day-to-day operations, fielding questions, coordinating programs and volunteers, fund-raising, networking, consulting and generally being awesome.  Her love for community and grassroots movements started when she was a student at UW-Stevens Point, where she became active in Amnesty International, the Environmental Council,  student governance, the fight against the Crandon mine, and other efforts.  In 1998 Amy decided to get into organizing professionally and moved to Tennessee to work for SOCM battling strip-mining.  After being part of winning protection of 62,000 acres of land around Fall Creek Falls State Park in Tennessee from strip-mining, she decided return to her home state of Wisconsin, where she has worked at the GLC since 2003.

Board of Directors:

Jessica Collura, Co-Chair

Jessica is a doctoral student in Human Development and Family Studies whose work focuses on youth participation and community leadership.  For the past two years she has worked as a Project Assistant for the Center for Nonprofits.  In this role, she has helped to coordinate Communiversity sessions, organized a student chapter for the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and written and disseminated policy briefs and guides on youth participation.  Prior to entering graduate school, Jessica was a Teach for America corps member and taught high school English for three years in Camden, New Jersey.  She began volunteering with the GLC in the spring of 2010 and is honored to now serve as the board co-chair.

Merle Margolis, Co-Chair

Merle Margolis is a co-chair of GLC's board.  She started volunteering at GLC in 2005.  Merle came to Madison from Chicago in 1997.  She attended UW-Madison's School of Library and Information Studies and graduated from GLC's Fall 2008 General Semester.  Merle plans on attending Northwestern College's online Master's of Organizational Leadership program in June 2011.  Meanwhile, she works at Wisconsin Dept. of Health Services' Office of Independent Employment, Pathway's Library, and is NAMI-Dane County Library Committee's chair.

Helen Klebesadel, Treasurer

Helen Klebesadel is an artist and an educator.  Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, she now resides in Madison, Wisconsin.  She is best known for her richly detailed narrative watercolor paintings.  Klebesadel exhibits her artwork nationally and internationally.  She periodically curates exhibitions that explore diverse voices in contemporary art.  She is best known for her feminist works, which examine culturally based definitions of women in myth, folklore, and stories of Western culture.  Klebesadel’s background includes growing up on a small dairy farm in southern Wisconsin, and earning a living for eight years running a house painting business, aptly named ‘Painted Ladies,’ before returning to college.  She received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1989.   

Since September 2000, Klebesadel has been Director of the Womens Studies Consortium of the University of Wisconsin System.  Prior to that, she was an Associate Professor at Lawrence University.  There she had been a member of the faculty for ten years teaching painting, printmaking, and gender studies courses. Klebesadel is also a past national President of the Women’s Caucus for Art.  In that position, she led a delegation of 100 women in the arts from the US, Canada, and Mexico to the NGO Forum of the 5th United Nations World Conference on Women in Beijing, in the fall of 1995.  Helen’s art and prose have been published in Frontiers, Feminist Studies, and CALYX.   She is a current Wisconsin Arts Board member, appointed by Governor Doyle in 2005.   Her artwork can be seen at <http://Klebesadel.com>.

Hazel Symonette

Hazel Symonette, Ph.D. is Program Development & Assessment Specialist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Student Life, Multicultural Student Center.  She is committed to creating and sustaining authentically inclusive and vibrantly responsive teaching, learning, and living, and working environments that are conducive to success for all.  Her work draws on social justice and systemic change research to create meaningful and life-changing interactions among students, faculty, staff, and administrators.  Symonette provides a myriad of personal, professional, and leadership development opportunities for campus communities locally as well as nationally and internationally.  She has been instrumental in developing four of UW-Madison's five year-long campus workforce learning communities for faculty, staff, and administrators.  She is the founder and director of the Excellence through Diversity Institute.

Dr. Symonette has served 3 years as Co-Chair of the American Evaluation Association, Building Diversity Initiative, and as co-chair of the Multi-Ethnic Issues in Evaluation Topical Interest Group.  She completed a 3-year elected term on the national Board of Directors of the American Evaluation Association in 2004 and started a 3 year appointment in 2008 as AEA's representative to the Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation and on the AEA Ethics Committee.

Jan Saiz

Jan has lived in Madison for almost forty years, except for the two-and-a-half years she spent in Albuquerque, NM while her youngest son, Sean, attended law school at the University of New Mexico.

Jan retired from AT&T after twenty-eight years of service and went back to college at UW-Madison to get her BA in History.  She was an activist in Native American issues and belonged to the student organization, Wunk Sheek, where she helped organize the Pow Wow for several years.  Jan was a member of the Wisconsin Union Directorate and enjoyed working with the young energetic people who were bright and real go-getters.  She also raised four sons in Madison who all graduated from UW-Madison.  Jan has always thought that giving back to your community should be a goal for everyone.  Jan's father was a strong supporter of unions and she was active in the union while working for the Bell system and AT&T.  When she became a manager, she did not forget her own beginnings and where she came from.

Jan has enjoyed her time with GLC and has been with us since the beginning.  She looks forward to working with those that she is acquainted with and all the new people who have come to be a part of this community.

Jan stays active since retiring, taking care of her grandchildren after school and fulfilling the role of president of the Title V11 Parent Committee, which is part of the Madison School District.  She also serves as the president of the Wisconsin Women of Color Network. 




Follow Us: