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Since 2002, Andrea Batista Schlesinger has led the effort to turn the Drum Major Institute, originally founded by an advisor to Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the civil rights movement, into a progressive policy institute with national impact. Under Andrea's leadership as Executive Director, DMI has released several important policy papers to national audiences including: Middle Class 2004: How Congress Voted, People and Politics in America's Big Cities, and From Governance to Accountability: Building Relationships that Make Schools Work. Andrea studied public policy at the University of Chicago. Andrea has worked in various capacities to promote educational equity and youth empowerment. She directed a national campaign to engage college students in the discussion on the future of Social Security for the Pew Charitable Trusts, and served as Director of Public Relations of Teach For America before working as the education advisor to Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer. Andrea has been profiled in the New York Times, New Yorker magazine, Latina Magazine and in "Hear us Now," an award-winning documentary about her tenure as the student member of the New York City Board of Education. She has been published in Alternet.org, New York Newsday, New York Sun, and City Limits magazine. She grew up and currently lives in Brooklyn. Click here to read more about Andrea.

Amy M. Traub
Associate Director of Research
atraub@drummajorinstitute.org

Amy Traub joined the staff of the Drum Major Institute at the beginning of 2005. A native of the Cleveland area, Amy is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Chicago. She received a graduate fellowship to study political science at Columbia University, where she earned her Masters degree in 2001 and completed coursework towards a Ph.D. Her studies focused on comparative political economy, political theory, and social movements. Funded by a field research grant from the Tinker Foundation, Amy conducted original research in Mexico City, exploring the development of the Mexican student movement. Before coming to the Drum Major Institute, Amy headed the research department of a major New York City labor union, where her efforts contributed to the resolution of strikes and successful union organizing campaigns by hundreds of working New Yorkers. She has also been active on the local political scene working with progressive elected officials. Amy resides in Manhattan Valley with her husband.

Cyrus Dugger
Senior Fellow in Civil Justice
cdugger@drummajorinstitute.org

Cyrus Dugger graduated from Brown University in 2002 with a B.A. in Political Science. Before beginning law school at NYU Law he was engaged in community development work for five summers as a volunteer, Project Supervisor, Assistant Project Director, and Project Director in Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Honduras. In addition to his summertime work in Latin America, Cyrus spent a summer in Ghana performing research on matrilineal inheritance with Alliance International Research for Minority Scholars. Shortly after college he worked as a researcher at Massachusetts Voters for Fair Elections (a clean elections advocacy group) and as an intern at Political Research Associates (a research center dedicated to studying right wing movements). During law school Cyrus interned at Make the Road by Walking, the Socio-Economic Rights Project of the Community Law Center in Capetown, the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the New York State Defenders Association's Immigrant Defense Project, and the American Civil Liberties Union's Human Rights Working Group. His law school extracurricular activities included serving as Co-Chair of the NYU Chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild (2004-2005), Education Chair of NYU's Law Students for Human Rights (2004-2005), MCC Representative of NYU BALSA (2004-2005), and Co-Chair of NYU's Public Interest Law Foundation (2005-2006). In his last year at NYU, Cyrus served as an Articles Selection Editor for the NYU Review of Law and Social Change (2005-2006) and was selected as the Arthur Garfield Hays Roger Baldwin Civil Rights & Human Rights Fellow (2005-2006).

Penny Abeywardena
Director of Strategic Relations
penny@drummajorinstitute.org

Prior to joining DMI, Penny was the Development Program Officer at the Funding Exchange, where she managed donor advised funds, and actively participated in developing fundraising and grantmaking strategies. She has worked in both development and program areas for Human Rights Watch, the Fund for Global Human Rights and UNICEF-Jordan. Penny was the editor of Rights News, an annual publication by the Center for the Study of Human Rights at Columbia University from 2004-2006. Most recently, Penny served on the planning committee for the 2005 & 2006 "Making Money Make Change" retreat and the advisory council for the 2006 "Creating Change Through Family Philanthropy" conference – both of these national gatherings are for young people with wealth committed to supporting social justice. Penny serves on the Board of Resource Generation and Sakhi for South Asian Women. She is also a mentor for Third Wave Foundation's Why Give program for young women of color and transgender youth.

Penny earned a BA in Political Science with a minor in Business Administration from the University of Southern California. In 2004, she completed her Master in International Affairs at Columbia University, where she studied economic & political development and non-profit management. She concurrently completed Columbia's Fundraising Management program.

Elana Levin
Director of Communications
elevin@drummajorinstitute.org

Elana Levin's press and communications skills were honed working as a community organizer and activist. After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College in 2001 and working in the art industry, Elana volunteered on Howard Dean's campaign experience that inspired her to change career paths. Since then she has worked on state and local political campaigns, serving most recently as the Volunteer Coordinator of former ACLU lawyer Norman Siegel's Public Advocate campaign.

Elana was also co-founder of the Greene Dragon street theatre group, which sought to change the media's portrayal of protest and patriotism during the 2004 Republican National Convention. She helped organize what NPR named the "Best Protest of the RNC."

In addition, Elana has been involved in community development issues such as the Williamsburg Waterfront rezoning and the successful fight to stop the West Side Stadium.

In the past two years, Elana has successfully pitched stories to, or been quoted in, a wide range of publications, including The New York Times, Newsday, The Village Voice, Time Magazine, The Daily News, Le Monde and several small town papers nationwide. Clips of political actions and interviews have been shown on WNBC, PBS, MSNBC, BBC, CSPAN, NY1, ABC 7, Fox 5 and on NPR affiliates. She has also been profiled on Gothamist.com.

Elana lives in Williamsburg Brooklyn, where she hosts a weekly cocktail hour for progressives called "Drinking Liberally", attends art happenings and rhapsodizes about the B61 bus.

LeeAnn Fletcher
Operations Manager / Development Associate
lafletcher@drummajorinstitute.org

LeeAnn Fletcher has served as the Office Manager for the Drum Major Institute since the beginning of 2005. Prior to this she worked as a dean at the Sadie Nash Leadership Project, a program which promotes leadership, service and activism among young women. Originally from Nebraska, LeeAnn is a Cum Laude graduate of Hastings College, where she earned degrees in Communications and Theater Arts. She was a student leader in organizations including the Campus Acquaintance Rape Educators, Girl Power, Public Relations Council, and the Hastings College Artist Lecture Series. She currently lives in Manhattan.

Sarah Solon
Policy and Communications Associate
ssolon@drummajorinstitute.org

Hailing from Colorado College, where she's double-majoring in comparative literature and women and public policy, Sarah Solon began her communications internship at DMI in January 2006. Before DMI, she was a contributing editor of the CiPher, her school's award-winning alternative news and arts magazine. Sarah has served as the President of Publications at Colorado College, as an intern at BUST magazine, as a Public Affairs intern at Planned Parenthood, and as a research and writing intern at an economic consulting firm. She is currently working on a senior thesis project about the role of national policies in shaping the plight of female soldiers. Sarah is happy to be in New York, learning about policies and communications from the DMI staff.

Tsedey Betru
Director of DMI Scholars
tbetru@drummajorinstitute.org

Prior to joining the Drum Major Institute, Tsedey was the Director of Administration for the New York City Center for Charter School Excellence, managing operations for a range of services that support New York City charter schools. She has provided research support to PolicyLink on their Equitable Development Toolkit, the Center for Social Inclusion¹s Diversity Advancement Initiative and the Living Cities Milano Collaborative for the Milano Graduate School for Management and Urban Policy. In addition to her work in nonprofit administration and research, Tsedey led national and local mobilization campaigns with young people for the Fannie Lou Hamer Project of the National Voting Rights Institute and the 7th Street McClymonds Neighborhood Improvement Initiative of the San Francisco Foundation. These campaigns aim to build the capacity of youth to become agents of change in their communities. She serves on the Coordinating Committee of The Grassroots Movement, a national grassroots advocacy organization. Originally from Ethiopia, Tsedey grew up in Memphis and currently resides in Manhattan. She has a B.S. in Urban Planning from Cornell University and a M.S. in Nonprofit Management from New School University.