RESULTS 2023 Grassroots Board Elections
Dear active RESULTS Grassroots Partners,
We are writing to offer you the opportunity to vote for two of your fellow RESULTS volunteers to represent the grassroots volunteers on the boards of RESULTS and RESULTS Educational Fund. This is a very important decision and we have great candidates.
We need your vote by June 28!
RESULTS and RESULTS Educational Fund are looking to fill TWO grassroots board positions to serve a term of three (3) years beginning in July 2023. (There are four grassroots board seats in total.) Grassroots Board Members represent the volunteer body on the Board of Directors and on the Executive Committee of the Board. It is the responsibility of the Board of Directors to work with the Executive Director in shaping the direction of RESULTS, advising on major policies for the organization, and providing fiduciary oversight. The Executive Committee of the Board is the primary governing body of the organization. It meets every six to eight weeks by conference call and are in communication via e-mail and telephone calls. Members must be able to participate at this level and are expected to chair or serve on a Board Committee(s) as well as participate in fundraising for the organization. Grassroots board members play a particular role in representing grassroots perspectives on the board.
Thank you to all who nominated dedicated volunteers as candidates to serve on the board — your nomination was recognition of their commitment and leadership skills. And thank you to the nominees who agreed to be considered. We’re honored!
Find our grassroots board candidate videos and bios below:
- Aaron Carrillo (Expert on Poverty, Upper Midwest Regional Coordinator)
- Allison Gallaher (Cleveland, OH Group, Great Lakes Regional Coordinator)
- Randy Rosso (RESULTS Virginia Group)
You may vote for one candidate. Remember, voting ends Wednesday, June 28 at 11:59pm Eastern Time. Check out each candidate below to view their online video statements and bios.
Click here to cast your vote
Aaron Carrillo (Expert on Poverty, Upper Midwest Regional Coordinator)
Hello, my name is Aaron Carrillo and I am originally from, and now living back in, El Paso, Texas. In the time between, I moved 21 times, turned 18, received my bachelor’s degree at the University of Kansas and decided to pursue my Master’s as a first-generation student. I graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine with my Master’s degree in Health Service Administration and am now an Administrative Resident at the Hospital of Providence here in El Paso (fun fact at the same hospital system I was born at). I am a RESULTS Fellow Alum from 2018-19, an EOP since 2018, and a Regional Coordinator since I believe 2021.
Statement of Intent:
I have been able to see RESULTS in many facets from being an intern covering the Child Tax Credit in the Spring semester of January 2022, and providing numerous trainings on storytelling and anti-oppressions tactics (check out my anti-oppression training this coming May with two fellow EOPs.)
I am running for the board to continue the work I have been doing with RESULTS. I want to continue helping group leaders as a Regional Coordinator, and I will now get to help the organization work through leading our anti-oppression efforts. As a current expert on poverty, I want to bring the voices of the close-knit family I have had the blessing of getting to know to the board.
Growing up with RESULTS from barely being a sophomore in college to now helping the community I was born in by gaining access to needed service lines in healthcare, I believe that I am going to be able to also help volunteers gain access to RESULTS and their voice to make change. I want to ensure this organization holds to its anti-oppression statement and to lifting the voices of everyday people to make change.
-Aaron Carrillo
Allison Gallaher (Cleveland, OH Group, Great Lakes Regional Coordinator)
I have been a RESULTS advocate since the mid-1990s, when the partners of the Cleveland group declared that since I came to the monthly national conference call, was a monthly donor, and regularly took action, I was officially part of the group. It had been my intention to spend time with my friends and eat cookies! But the RESULTS model of partnership and support for continuous growth in leadership drew me in, as it has for so many of us.
Throughout the years, I’ve been a partner, group leader, regional coordinator, trainer, and even a part-time staffer with what we now call the Grassroots Impact Team. I’ve lobbied members of Congress, met with editorial boards, made community presentations, and written letters to the editor (some of which actually get published!). I especially love to support advocates in finding their voices and stepping out of their comfort zones to take bold action.
Statement of Intent:
As with every role I’ve taken on in RESULTS, I was encouraged by others to seek election to the board. While I have a lot of experience as a RESULTS advocate, I’ve not seen myself as having the type of expertise I imagine a board member needs. That others see that in me is gratifying, and a bit terrifying. What I do know is that participating in RESULTS is about stepping outside our comfort zones to take actions that restore equity. So my question in accepting the nomination was, how could I contribute to that with my service on the board?
I think the RESULTS Grassroots Board needs diverse representation from the volunteer base. Lots of people like me have served over the years — white, baby boomers with little direct experience of poverty, in part because we dominated the composition of the grassroots. I am proud that RESULTS is confronting directly the barriers and biases that interfere with diversity in participation at every level of the organization and educating people like me about the many ways the structures I take for granted have been designed to disadvantage people. In my ideal world, the Grassroots Board would be composed of this next generation of advocates who understand the challenges of the 21st century. That said, should you decide to elect me to the board, I will be honored to serve, committed to listening to the needs and concerns of grassroots advocates, and representing you on the board.
I have participated through many transitions in RESULTS. I remember fondly past staff, past campaigns, and generations of volunteers. And I am not interested in RESULTS’ past, I’m invested in RESULTS’ future. My goals as a board member would be:
- to center the ideas of people with lived experience of poverty in our campaigns
- to promote the uniquely powerful role that RESULTS volunteers play in the success of the organization
- to ensure we attract the best staff and treat them fairly
If these priorities are meaningful to you, I welcome your support.
– Allison Gallaher
Randy Rosso (RESULTS Virginia Group)
The child of journalists, I’ve always felt compelled to do more than tell the story; I want to change it. I studied sociology in college, where my eyes were opened to the broad array of societal challenges and inequities. I worked for a literacy nonprofit in Boston and then went on to earn a Master’s in Public Policy, beginning my career with a consulting firm, working on SNAP and welfare reform. I’ve spent most of my career on anti-poverty programs, but it was the pandemic, and the killing of George Floyd in 2020, that drove home just how deeply rooted the inequities are. Once you see, you have to act.
I grew up in Arlington, Virginia, where I live today with my spouse and two kids. In my spare time, I play mandolin or piano, read, play video games with my kids, and watch Star Wars shows.
Statement of Intent:
For me, it all comes down to fairness. My name is Randy Rosso, and I began volunteering with RESULTS’ Virginia chapter a year ago. RESULTS Virginia advocates for solutions to both global and domestic poverty. Soon after joining the Virginia RESULTS group, I became the domestic policy group co-leader for Virginia, and now I am co-group leader along with Grace Higginbottom. I facilitated some of our meetings with Hill staff during the Set the Agenda campaign earlier this year.
I am running for one of the open grassroots board member positions because I want to contribute my knowledge of anti-poverty and anti-hunger programs, and to further deepen my commitment to RESULTS and to the moral imperative of ending poverty.
I come from a broken home. My parents divorced when I was 9, and my childhood was often chaotic. An experience of this kind changes you: it either hardens your heart, or it makes you empathetic to all kinds of suffering. It gave me a deep-seated awareness of unfairness and inequity. Poverty, and diseases of poverty, are deeply unfair, costly, and preventable. Throughout my career, I have worked on policy research and advocacy around programs intended to reduce or mitigate the harm of poverty: SNAP (food stamps), cash assistance, affordable housing, and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Only since the pandemic has this work become a mission for me: the mission to end hunger and poverty for good.
The pandemic shined a bright light on the fundamental unfairness of poverty. In America, Congress passed legislation to bolster the economy and help Americans get by while schools were closed and tens of millions of workers were suddenly unemployed: universal free school meals that families could pick up from school buildings, enhanced unemployment insurance, increased food assistance, emergency rental assistance to prevent evictions, and the expanded Child Tax Credit (CTC), which gave families monthly payments in the second half of 2021. The aid worked — poverty and food insecurity actually declined during a pandemic. The CTC actually helped many low-income families feel some sense of security. It helped reduce child poverty by over 40%. We got a glimpse of what a post-poverty America could look like.
Then it all ended. Child poverty shot back up. Evictions are back up above pre-pandemic levels. Older Americans who were getting $283 in SNAP every month, thanks to the emergency allotments, went back to getting only $23 per month. Congress effectively said, “we are okay with millions of Americans being poor”. It was never clearer to me how poverty is a policy choice than when Congress transparently made that choice.
Getting so close to ending poverty only to see the door slammed shut was eye opening. At one point, policy work was a job to me. The pandemic response made this work so much more real: people’s lives were at stake. Poverty disproportionately affects people of color, who are also 2-3 times more likely to be food insecure than white people. Members of the LGBTQIA+ community also face elevated poverty and food insecurity rates. As the father of a non-binary kid, that is personal to me. But all of these disparities are upsetting and unacceptable, because behind the numbers are real people and families for whom these issues are personal emergencies. They need help now.
When the CTC ended and millions of children were thrust back into poverty, I decided my policy work was not enough. I joined RESULTS in May 2022 to be part of a grassroots movement to pressure Congress to restore the CTC and pursue other reforms to end poverty in America. The following month I found myself in meetings with Hill staffers, talking up the CTC, and I participated in the fly-in meetings with Hill staff in November last year. I also learned about RESULTS’ global initiatives, on malnutrition; TB, AIDS, and malaria; and basic education. I knew this is a movement I needed to be a part of.
-Randy Rosso