Staff & Board
Get to know our team
Betsy Plum, Executive Director
Betsy has spent her career in the social justice field. Before joining Riders Alliance, she served as the Vice President of Policy for the New York Immigration Coalition. While at the NYIC, Betsy led multiple winning policy campaigns, oversaw robust rapid response efforts and organizational growth, and helped set the vision for what a more inclusive New York must look like. She joined Riders Alliance in 2020 bringing her commitment to build a stronger, more thriving New York and a belief that we arrive at this place by investing in our public systems and holding those in power accountable. In addition to her role at Riders Alliance, Betsy serves on the Board of Directors of Central American Legal Assistance and is a Sterling Fellow, a network of systems leaders working to increase economic mobility across New York City, with racial equity as a central guiding value. She is a graduate of Bard College and the London School of Economics.
Mayra Aldás-Deckert, Lead Organizer
Mayra mobilizes our grassroots base of transit riders and leads the organization’s campaigns. Mayra has been a strong advocate for immigrant communities for years. Before joining Riders Alliance, she was the Director of Community Engagement at the New York Immigration Coalition where she managed a number of initiatives, implemented outreach strategies to engage New York City’s diverse communities, and served as the main coordinator of the NYIC’s Key to the City Initiative. Mayra is a graduate of Brooklyn College with a B.S. in Business Management and Finance. In Ambato, she completed three years of Commercial Engineering with a focus in Management and Business Planning at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. A native of Ecuador, Mayra moved to New York City with her family in 2005. She currently resides in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
Salma Allam, Grassroots Organizing Fellow
Salma joined Riders Alliance as the first Grassroots Organizing Fellow through the Johnson Justice Fellowship Program. Before joining Riders Alliance, Salma worked at the Arab American Association of New York for three years. Growing up in Egypt, Salma became politicized after the 2011 Arab Spring which showed her what the power of the people manifested can accomplish. Salma is passionate about movements for liberation and building a world that addresses the needs of the many, rather than the few. She graduated from DePauw University in 2020 with a double major in English Literature and Middle Eastern Studies. A lifelong learner, Salma is always searching for political education spaces rooted in praxis. She is excited to fight for better public transit, an area so important to working class communities.
Danna Dennis, Senior Organizer
Danna has been building communities and fighting for positive social change for years. As a college student at SUNY Herkimer, she represented her freshman class in student government and coordinated public relations for the Black Student Union. Danna is a longtime volunteer in the Seventh Day Adventist Church where she has served as a youth leader and planned mission trips and conferences, convening more than eleven hundred people. Before joining the staff of Riders Alliance, Danna worked in the health care field and was a volunteer leader at Riders Alliance fighting for better C train services and affordable MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers on the Fair Fares campaign.
Molly Galvin, Director of Fundraising and Organizational Development
Molly spent the last twenty years helping passionate donors and visionary nonprofit leaders advance national and international advocacy and policy solutions. She grew up in rural Ohio and has worked to build community and a more just and livable planet as an AmeriCorps volunteer, community organizer, and fundraising specialist. She came to Riders Alliance from the National Parks Conservation Association where she was the Regional Director of Development, Northeast. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social and Global Studies from Antioch College.
Derrick Holmes, Digital Strategist
Derrick, a former HVAC technician by trade, has always seen access to reliable public transit as one of the most important characteristics of equitable, resilient cities. As a Miami native, his work in advocacy began by doing outreach as a part of Transit Alliance Miami, a nonprofit that led a two-year redesign of Miami-Dade County's entire bus network. In his role at Riders Alliance, he aims to help improve access to mobility and opportunity for millions of New Yorkers and ensure that New York continues to set the most progressive example for transit agencies around the country and the world.
Paul Medvetsky, Field Organizer
Paul was born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, and is passionate about community engagement and winning transportation improvements. He began community organizing while studying in Washington, D.C., where he worked with tenant unions and urbanist nonprofits. Before joining Riders Alliance, he interned with the NYC Department of City Planning and the National Capital Planning Commission. Paul holds a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service in Culture and Politics from Georgetown University, and can be found perpetually waiting for the Staten Island Railway to arrive.
Caitlin Pearce, Deputy Director
Caitlin oversees campaigns and organizing for Riders Alliance. She brings a decade of experience in labor advocacy and a passion for making New York City a better place to work and live. Caitlin previously served as Executive Director of Freelancers Union, where she fought to expand protections for independent workers, led a grassroots coalition to pass landmark wage theft legislation, and built a national model for worker-led organizing, growing the union’s membership to half a million freelancers. Caitlin holds a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree from Bard College.
Danny Pearlstein, Policy and Communications Director
Danny started advocating for better transit in high school and developed his passion for politics and organizing while working in neighborhood groups and city government. He came to Riders Alliance from New York City Council where he was chief of staff to Committee on Land Use Chair David Greenfield and counsel to Courts & Legal Services Chair Rory Lancman. Previously, he represented injured workers and low-income tenants in court. He has degrees in environmental studies and urban planning from Cornell and law from Cardozo.
Jolyse Race, Senior Organizer
Jolyse has been a community and labor organizer for over seven years. She began organizing while earning her BA in Anthropology at Michigan State University. During undergrad she worked to organize an undergraduate student union and ran campaigns to decrease tuition and improve policies responding to sexual assault on campus. She spent years fundraising for organizations and projects that directly support those with intersectional identities in her community. Jolyse also spent two years organizing for Michigan State University’s Graduate Employees Union where she played a crucial role in raising membership and finishing a successful contract campaign. She is excited to continue her commitment to social justice by fighting for better public transportation in New York City.
Selvi Ulusan, Fundraising and Special Events Associate
Selvi has been involved with various nonprofit organizations since high school, and most recently has come to Riders Alliance from teaching in NYC elementary schools. She is passionate about uplifting communities and fighting for a world-class transit system that New York City deserves. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and English Literature from the University of Vermont and spent her time in college in multiple advocacy organizations on and off campus as well as fundraising for local nonprofits based in Burlington, VT.
Kristin Wright, Human Resources and Operations Manager
Kristin brings to Riders Alliance her passion for advocacy and political action, developed through over fifteen years of civic community engagement. She grew up in California and studied Political Science at the University of British Columbia. Central to Kristin’s role at Riders Alliance is her belief that progressive change begins with a dedication to equity and social justice. She strives to provide a foundation of investment in personnel’s growth and development in all aspects of Riders Alliance’s work. She is driven by a commitment to supporting, empowering, and facilitating the work of her fellow staff members.
Interested in joining our team? Take a look at our open positions here.
Our board
Tolani Arike Adeboye
Tolani is Senior Director of the Office of Data Management at the New York City Department of Education, where she leads state and Federal reporting initiatives, academic data infrastructure and governance efforts, and strategic data management. Tolani is a lifelong public transit user and is particularly concerned about access for under-served communities and low-income riders. She joined the Riders Alliance as a member-activist in 2012 and is a proud resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Marco A. Carrión
Marco currently serves as Executive Director of El Puente, a youth centered human rights organization, based in Brooklyn and Puerto Rico, that uses education and the arts to advance racial and environmental justice. He previously served as the Commissioner of New York City’s Community Affairs Unit, serving as a direct link between the Mayor and our city’s neighborhoods. Marco’s commitment to communities was honed in the national and local labor movements, fighting for the needs of working people. He worked for the AFL-CIO, and later served as the Political and Legislative Director of the New York City Central Labor Council, where he forged deep partnerships among the 300 local unions and 1.3 million members the CLC represented while designing political strategies. Marco has also worked for two New York State Governors, and served as the Chief of Staff for the NYS Senate Health Committee Chair.
Errol Cockfield
Errol is a strategic communications executive and crisis management expert who helps high profile organizations and individuals protect their reputations and advance brand goals. Most recently as Senior Vice President for Communications at MSNBC, Cockfield set the communications and media strategy, and partnered with editorial and business leads as the network evolved to a multi-platform destination for news and perspectives. Prior to MSNBC, Cockfield was senior vice president in Edelman NY’s Corporate and Public Affairs division. Cockfield was press secretary to New York Governor Eliot Spitzer and his successor David Paterson. He was also chief of staff and communications director to the Democratic Conference of the New York State Senate. Cockfield is also a diversity, equity and inclusion advocate, speaker and writer.
Libero Della Piana
Libero is the Managing Director of Organizing and Strategic Partnership with the Drug Policy Alliance. He has 30 years of experience as a writer, editor, organizer, strategist, and educator for social movement organizations. Previously, he was the Senior Strategist of the Alliance for a Just Society, the Communications Director of People’s Action, Digital Director at PeoplesWorld.org, and a Senior Research Associate at the Applied Research Center (now Race Forward). He began organizing in high school in Salt Lake City, Utah and is a graduate of the Center for Third World Organizing’s Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program (MAAP) and its Community Partnership Program. Libero is on the board of the Grassroots Policy Project and the advisory council of IllumiNative. He lives in East Harlem, New York.
Mark Foggin
Mark currently serves as the Interim Chief Executive Officer at Arab-American Family Support Center. He is a civic sector management consultant helping nonprofit, public sector and other mission-driven organizations that focus on economic and community development. He co-founded the consulting firm Public Works Partners and, before that, spent more than a dozen years in the Bloomberg and Giuliani administrations. Mark has lived in four of the five boroughs and is an enthusiastic multimodal commuter.
Michael Freedman-Schnapp
Michael is an urban planning and public policy expert working for Forsyth Street Advisors, an advisory and asset management firm focused on affordable housing, real estate, and municipal/impact investment. He was previously the Director of the City Council’s Policy & Innovation Division and Director of Policy for Council Member Brad Lander, where he was critical to the planning and implementation of the largest participatory budgeting process in North America. He teaches urban planning and policy courses at the Pratt Institute and the NYU Wagner School.
Asa Johnson
Asa brings a range of experience to the field of social justice philanthropy and a commitment to building a truly participatory democracy. Born in New York City, Asa is a lifetime MTA commuter. Immediately after graduation, he went to work for the Howard Dean campaign. His experience in that election, trying to build lasting grassroots participation in get-out-the-vote efforts, led to his abiding interest in integrating community organizing with civic participation. For the last ten years Asa has been in hospitality and is an owner of Bar Meridian in Prospect Heights.
Theodore A. Moore
Theo is the Executive Director of ALIGN (Alliance for a Greater New York), a longstanding alliance of labor and community organizations which works at the intersection of economy, environment, and equity to make change and build movement. Prior to this post, he was Vice President of Policy & Programs at the New York Immigration Coalition. He brings more than 15 years of nonprofit and political advocacy experience—in the office of NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, at the Restaurant Opportunities Center United, at ALIGN, and with the Working Families Party. Theo is a founding member of New Kings Democrats and serves on the Board of Directors of the Brooklyn Movement Center, a Black-led, membership-based organization of primarily low-to-moderate income Central Brooklyn residents. He’s a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, born and raised in the East Flatbush section of the borough, and a long-suffering Mets fan.
Elizabeth Perez
A Riders Alliance member since 2017, Elizabeth joined the board in 2021. Elizabeth Perez currently works as the General Counsel at CASES (Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services). In her prior role as Compliance Officer and Counsel at East Harlem Council for Human Service she was responsible for ensuring compliance with laws and regulations applicable, and before that as Legal Director at Lawyers Alliance for New York, Elizabeth oversaw the provision of pro bono legal services to nonprofits across New York City. In her 13 years of service as a public interest attorney, Elizabeth has aimed to support organizations addressing equity and quality of life for all New Yorkers, and she is especially passionate about access to quality health care. She is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law, the University of London, and Texas A&M University.
Richard L. Oram
Richard has an urban transport career spanning 40 years as a federal and local employee, consultant, and business owner. He earned a U.S. Department of Transportation Outstanding Public Service Award in 1980. In 1990, he formed Commuter Check Services Corp, a national marketing and financial service to facilitate mass use of tax-free transit benefits. He has degrees in economics and business administration from Lehigh University, a master’s degree in urban planning from London School of Economics, and published doctoral work on the economic history of public transport in the US and UK. In 2003 he co-founded Sun Farm Network, an innovative New Jersey solar energy company. He now chairs the Fund for the Environment and Urban Life.
Benjamin Kabak
Ben is the author of Second Avenue Sagas, a widely read blog that focuses on issues involving mass transit in New York City. He is a graduate of NYU Law School and an attorney at Bortstein Legal Group in Manhattan.
Jeremy Soffin
Jeremy is a Senior Vice President at BerlinRosen, a public affairs and communications firm in New York. He previously worked as director of media relations at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), where he served as chief spokesman for the agency that runs New York’s buses, subways, suburban commuter rails and various bridges and tunnels.