RESULTS 2025 Grassroots Board Elections
Dear active RESULTS Grassroots Partners,
We urge you to vote for one 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 22!
RESULTS needs to fill ONE Grassroots Director position to serve a term of three (3) years beginning in July 2025. (There are four grassroots board seats in total.) Grassroots Directors represent the volunteers on the Board of Directors. The Board of Directors works with the Executive Director (Joanne Carter) to shape the direction of RESULTS. This work includes providing guidance on policies for the organization and fiduciary oversight. (Fiduciary oversight means monitoring finances and resources). The person elected will serve on the Grassroots Directors Committee, which meets monthly. They will also chair or serve on other Board Committee(s) and participate in fundraising. Grassroots board members represent grassroots perspectives on the board, which is a critical role.
Thank you to all who nominated dedicated volunteers as candidates! Your nomination recognized each candidate’s commitment and leadership skills. And thank you to the nominees who agreed to be candidates. We’re honored!
Find our grassroots board candidate videos and bios below:
- Eric Hayler
- Lynne Patalano
- Tia Simmons
You may vote for one candidate. Remember, voting ends Sunday, June 22 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. Check out each candidate below to view their online video statements and bios.
Learn more about the candidates!
Eric Hayler (Greenville/Spartanburg RESULTS Group)
I’m a husband and father to two wonderful young ladies, and three Shetland Sheepdogs! I retired after spending most of my carrier at BMW manufacturing in Spartanburg, SC and now I work as a business consultant. I help companies, non-profits, and schools to do things better and faster while making things easier. I have volunteered on several non-profit boards as a member, Treasurer, and Chair. I am currently the Board Chair of a Family Resource Center that connects families to important services to help them thrive.
In the mid 80’s I volunteered with The Hunger Project. Friends there told me about RESULTS. I began as a partner in the Central New Jersey group until I moved to Long Island where I started my own group and became group leader. I eventually found my way to SC and met Heide Craig. She and I got a group going here. I eventually became Regional Coordinator for my area. I enjoy meeting with Members of Congress and have attended many meetings on the hill with my groups.
My group and I helped our Member of Congress, Bob Inglis, to become a champion of our issues over several years. He eventually supported many initiatives that we brought to him even though he is a conservative Republican from the deep South. One year I invited him to speak during dinner at the RESULTS conference, and he accepted! His speech was well received and everyone left feeling empowered, even Bob! Because of my experience with him, I don’t give up on any member of our state delegation.
RESULTS greatest strength lies in the breadth and depth of our network. Our groups and members cover a large fraction of Congress. Many members have several decades of experience lobbying their Members of Congress and working with the media. The RESULTS network also includes many subject matter experts in critical areas relevant to our legislative initiatives.
Ironically, RESULTS biggest opportunities lie in the external threats that result from the current political climate. When has there been a bigger need to create the political will to end hunger and poverty?! Most Members of Congress don’t understand the services that aid organizations provide or their value streams. We can help them identify and prioritize the most critical areas for the precious resources that remain and work over time to get them returned to more effective levels. We can also work to provide assurances that money is not being wasted using approaches similar to when we supported oversight measures to ensure that USAID money was getting to the poorest of the poor people.
Lynne Patalano (Riverside/San Bernardino RESULTS Group)
When I was five, my best friend died, suddenly. I was told not to say ANYTHING about it, because it would be too upsetting for his mother. Later that year, another kid I knew died tragically, and again we were told not to upset his mom. I decided to become rich and famous to tell people we had to fix this world where kids died unmourned. I pursued an acting career in Hollywood, Seattle, and NYC. I starved and didn’t become famous.
I married and started a family. When I discovered RESULTS, it instantly resonated as the opportunity to fulfill my life’s mission to speak up to save kids’ lives! I taught public elementary school for 32 years and involved my students and colleagues in advocacy. Now I have 4 great adult children, and 6 grandkids, I am retired, widowed, and I volunteer with RESULTS almost fulltime.
I participated in the Hunger Project with Alan Gold, who told me about RESULTS in 1983. In 1985 Dorsey Lawson convinced me to start a group because our Rep. Lewis was on the Foreign Ops Subcommittee of Appropriations. Our group lobbied him for 28 years until he retired. Shirley Williams was my first coach and Regional Coordinator.
That group continues with new volunteers. We’ve hosted Regional Conferences for California. We’ve hosted RESULTS speakers from D.C. and other countries. We ‘ve done newspaper and radio interviews. We put on fundraising parties of various kinds.
I went to every International Conference from 1995 until 2019. Work colleagues came with me. Rep. Lewis became Chairman of Appropriations and supported our global requests. My students wrote to Congress and 5 times their Reps. spoke at their schools. I’ve been trained to teach advocacy skills workshops. Since retirement I have been a Regional Coordinator and have served one 3-year term as Grassroots Member of the Board of Directors.
I burst with pride whenever my own four kids have embraced the work that RESULTS does. All four have lobbied with me on Capitol Hill.
All four kids came to the International Conference in 1998. Years later, my son, Christopher, was on staff in the RESULTS office. My sons, Andrew and Benjamin have been Real Changers. My daughter phoned me once when she was at UCSB, to tell me she stood up in a lecture hall to contradict her University professor who said elected officials never care what their constituents want. She told me she had argued “…my mother and her RESULTS friends speak with Congressmen all the time, and they get money appropriated …”. (I cried with delight.)
I feel most proud that I’ve raised kids who know Representatives work for us.
I still embrace the two parts of the RESULTS mission from our early days: to generate the Political Will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty; and to inspire breakthroughs between people and their governments!
I believe there is profound strength in teaching people to stand up and be advocates for the values they care about. RESULTS has a tradition of providing us ways to transform our individual lives and become powerful in our communities. I think the volunteer activism we generate across various communities makes us unique. We are strong because every volunteer is a lobbyist; every voice is more demanding for better government and for a more just world.
Our other strength is our focus on human relationships. We have open-hearted relationships with other volunteers, and we relate to Congressman and their staffers as people with hearts and minds. That makes our requests stronger and our dedication more tenacious.
RESULTS gives you opportunities to learn about solutions to problems that seem impossibly disempowering. But that is just the start. We experience opportunities to say what we really want for the world, and be understood and respected for wanting life to be better for other people, even those we will never meet.
RESULTS provides us opportunities to know people of various backgrounds and situations. RESULTS offers trainings in leadership, anti-oppression, Motivational Interviewing, and speaking, writing, and getting published. We grow more articulate. We transform from ineffective complainers into knowledgeable, skilled advocates who dare to make demands. We get opportunities hear leading experts on policies and influence. We grow our capacities for strategic thinking, and understanding.
There is a transformation that happens when we come to know ourselves as agents of change, not only in the work we do in RESULTS, but in whatever we choose to do.
Tia Simmons (Southern WV RESULTS Group)
I’m from Hurricane in WV. My children are 10, 5, and 4; the oldest is my biological niece but my husband and I have been raising her for most of her life and we wouldn’t trade her for all the tea in China. My husband volunteers as well and is a current Fellow. I am in my third year of law school and am employed for a California-based Civil Rights litigation firm and I offer bankruptcy services on the side. I received my undergraduate degree in Political Science in 2021, and a Master’s in Economics in 2023. I interned on Capitol Hill in fall 2023 at Cato Institute, in the Office of Budget and Entitlement Policy. I am also a member of the Parent Advisory Board for the Automatic Benefit for Children Coalition, a RESULTS affiliate organization, where we advocate for expansion of the child tax credit.
I found RESULTS in Fall 2023 as my internship on Capitol Hill was ending. I knew I needed to advocate on a personal level. I found RESULTS. I received an email about Outreach and Partnerships and thought why not? I began trying to bring in new Volunteers. I brought in a friend, my husband, and a gentleman in my community. I have had an op-ed published and was interviewed by the Nineteenth. I was quoted in a study by the Children’s Defense Fund and Chapin Hill. I was invited to be a member of the PAB after Yolanda shared the posting and I decided to apply. I attended the fellowship conference in DC and have both led and participated in lobby meetings. I was also featured in a RESULTS Summer blog last July. I formed a new RESULTS group for Southern WV and we held our first meeting in January.
I believe my proudest moment was when the first volunteer I brought into RESULTS had her first op-ed published and picked up by hundreds of newspapers nationwide. I was absolutely thrilled for her, and to read her story and hear the passion she has for advocacy was just incredible. It was very empowering to know that I helped give someone a platform for their voice to be heard and to step out with her story, knowing that others cared to hear it, that there are people who can do something about it, and now those people have a chance to hear why it matters to her. It made me so much more determined to continue sharing the message with others who may not know that such a platform exists.
The community itself is definitely our biggest strength. There is such love and support and fellowship within this organization. The warm and welcome environment is so inclusive and it tends to wrap you up in it. I cannot imagine not being a part of RESULTS at this point. Another strength is in our leadership. We have incredible leaders here at RESULTS. We can count on them to keep us updated with reliable and accurate policy information as well as written resources and leave-behinds for our lobby meetings, webinars, all the tools we could need and that is something other organizations aren’t always so great at. There is a substantial educational component that certainly strengthens us as a unit as well.
There is always room for growth in every organization, and no one is perfect, but RESULTS comes pretty close. I think it’s important to remind each other that there is room at this table for everyone. Sometimes, that means we have to scoot over a bit so someone else can have a seat. And sometimes that might even mean getting up from the table and giving someone else our seat for a minute. Everyone wants and deserves to feel as if they have a place. No one single person could run RESULTS on their own and do everything that entails without the help of a dynamic and supportive staff as well as the many volunteers we have today. It takes a team. It’ll always take a team. Remembering to share opportunities, give a chance to step up and reach a hand down to help them is critical.