We are pleased to welcome Jasmine Jacobs, Victoria Rosen, Shana Siegel and Jacqueline Stuart as new team members at CDI. For more details about each of their backgrounds see the details below or visit our staff bios page. Welcome to the team!
Jasmine Jacobs
Jasmine Jacobs is a Communications and Development Specialist at CDI. She has over ten years of experience curating and implementing content strategies for various music industry, real estate, and nonprofit organizations across the country. Jasmine is an advocate for women’s rights, the LGBTQ+ community, and fighting all social injustices. Her largest achievements include being a former member of the Winthrop University Association of Black Journalists, ghostwriting for Forbes, and as the program coordinator for Conferences for Women, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization committed to helping close the pay gap, eliminate gender discrimination and achieve parity in company leadership and on corporate boards.
Victoria Rosen
Victoria RosenVictoria Rosen is a Communications and Development Specialist at CDI. She brings over fifteen years of experience as a project manager, strategic planner, government relations and communications & strategic development consultant. Victoria has worked with a diverse array of public and private sector clients—non-profits, universities, government agencies, grassroots activist orgs and foundations—to promote socially environmentally responsible policies and practices throughout New England and beyond. In 2014 she was recognized by the Deval Patrick administration with a “Leading By Example” Award at the Massachusetts State House for her work building diverse environmental justice coalitions across western Massachusetts. During her time as Communications Manager for Sustainability at UMass Amherst Victoria was part of a wonderful collaborative team of staff and students whose advocacy efforts convinced the Chancellor and UMA administration to sign the Real Food Challenge commitment, ensuring that 20% of all food spending would go toward purchase of Real Food by 2020 (making UMass the largest self-operating dining food system in the country to sign the commitment). Shortly thereafter, Victoria served as a political consultant to Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, one of the first African American Muslim women in U.S. history to seek a congressional U.S. House seat. Outside of CDI, in addition to her political advocacy work, Victoria enjoys spending time as an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and social justice educator. She has taught, presented and performed creative writing, interdisciplinary arts and social justice workshops at multiple educational institutions and arts venues throughout the Northeast.
Shana Siegel
Shana began her community-based nonprofit work as an undergraduate student in New York City. At that time, her organizing work focused on ending prison expansion, reforming mandatory minimum sentencing drug laws, and identifying and reporting violations of the rights of Workfare workers. As she became more involved in doing policy work around those issues, she entered graduate school and eventually earned her PhD in Sociology. Throughout graduate school, Shana continued to do policy-related research and community-based nonprofit work, as well as academic teaching and research. Post-graduation, Shana spent a few years teaching Sociology in New York City and Rochester, NY, before she left academia to return to nonprofit work. She has experience doing fundraising, including grant research and writing, and experience with program coordination, event organizing, project management. She also has experience working with Boards of Directors to revise bylaws, draft policies and procedures, undertake strategic planning processes, and create, fund, and manage-to-completion various projects –including a project that brought clean drinking water to one community for the first time in over 25 years, and another project that renovated/ rehabilitated the leach fields of that same community. In her free time, Shana likes to hang out with her cat (pictured) or go hiking, camping, biking or other outdoor things.
Jacqueline Stuart
Jacqueline Stuart is a Cooperative Development Specialist in CDI’s NEROC Program and is located in Vermont. Prior to joining CDI Jacqueline worked in adult education for 11 years fulfilling various roles including teaching, community coordinating, and plan management. In the late 1990s, she volunteered as an art instructor at Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility. This position fueled her interest in serving various kinds of communities and populations. She went on to volunteer in Americorps as a Resident Service Coordinator where she worked with residents in affordable housing communities. Jacqueline earned her M.F.A. from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Psychology at Saybrook University. During her spare time, Jacqueline can be found illustrating and writing an oracle deck set that is inspired by the spiritual energy of forests. She enjoys hiking, walking, hanging out in the woods, and meditating.