Written By: Alaina Perez
The Ginsberg Center would like to welcome Eleana Anderson and Jess Letaw to the team!
Eleana Anderson, our AmeriCorps VISTA member, hails from Wisconsin and holds a degree in Sociology with a concentration in Analysis and Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is skilled in data analysis and research and is committed to understanding and unpacking societal structures that impact needs for volunteerism and service learning. As a self-proclaimed people person and extrovert, Eleana has always desired to work in a field where she can make a meaningful impact on the lives of others.
At Ginsberg, she focuses on strengthening our relationships with the United Way and Washtenaw Association of Volunteer Coordinators. She aspires to improve the center's understanding of the volunteer landscape in Washtenaw County and potential challenges faced by community partners.
When asked what excites her about working with the Ginsberg Center, Eleana replied:
I'm super excited to get to know a new campus community and gain a deeper understanding of the ways civic engagement/service learning can benefit students as well as the community here in Ann Arbor! I'm also looking forward to getting to know my fellow staff members and learning from their experiences working in higher education. I always enjoy getting caught up in the energy and excitement of a new school year, and this year is no different!
Please join us in welcoming Eleana to the team! We look forward to working with and learning from her this year.
Joining Eleana is another new teammate at Ginsberg; meet Jess Letaw!
Originally from Georgia, Jessica A.S. Letaw (she/her) initially moved to Ann Arbor for graduate school, where she studied architecture. She joined Ginsberg over the summer and will be serving as the Community Leader in Residence, where she will work with the Ginsberg Team to inform our strategy and practices to deepen U-M’s community connections. In her work, she prioritizes helping students vote in local elections and in deepening their relationship with the university, “for as short or as long as they're here, through the lenses of Black and Indigenous history and community.”
Jess has been a longtime community organizer and advocate for housing and racial justice, consistently striving to illuminate inequities at the intersections of place, race, and history. These experiences have informed her work as a facilitator of critical conversations:
I believe in the role of (healthy/generative) conflict to help deepen our relationships to ourselves, each other, and our shared values. I've been in community organizing for a long time and know how to navigate the ever-shifting needs of nurturing relationships and logistics management. I love public speaking and how public conversations can expand the tools with which we can work with each other.
In addition to her role at Ginsberg, she runs two business partnerships, FutureRoot and the Co-liberation Collaborative, and previously founded a nonprofit, Building Matters Ann Arbor: “Those experiences have given me a lot of respect for the nuts and bolts of what it takes to make change work.”
Jess is excited to play a role in the next chapter of the Ginsberg Center as we settle into our new home on campus, and looks forward to expanding her community and getting to know her colleagues.
To Eleana and Jess, we say, welcome!