(she/her) As Vice President of Programs at Akonadi Foundation, Gina Acebo leverages more than 25 years as an organizer to strengthen the field of racial justice in Oakland. She manages the foundation’s movement building and learning work and supports its grantmaking programs to ensure that a racial justice focus permeates the organization’s internal and external work.
A third-generation Pilipina born and raised in Oakland, Gina’s work as a labor organizer with Service Employees International Union and Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, provided her with extensive campaign and base building experience. At the Center for Third World Organizing, she organized on local police accountability and education campaigns while training next-generation community organizers. During her ten years at Applied Research Center (now Race Forward), she served on the national racial justice training team to support partners’ racial equity policy advocacy and managed Facing Race, a national gathering of racial justice advocates in the US.
In addition to her movement-building work, Gina’s artistic practice and writing have been featured at Queens Nails Project, Forthrite Printing, the Angel Island Immigration Station and various print and online publications. She is one of the founding mamas of Sama Sama Cooperative, a family-run Filipino language & summer day camp that centers Filipinx culture, history, arts, & ecological heritage in the Bay Area to know self and reimagine our culture for a just world.
Gina can be reached at Gina [at] akonadi.org, 510-663-3867 x 302