Staff
Itzel Romero
Housing Organizer
itzel@sdaction.org
Allegra Heath-Stout
Director of Emergent Campaigns
(415) 799-7052
allegra@sdaction.org
Allegra Heath-Stout (she/her) is SDA’s Director of Emergent Campaigns and organizes the Masks for Equity group. Allegra comes to SDA after seven years of training Jewish young adults in community organizing at JOIN for Justice, the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network. Highlights of her work at JOIN included developing new fellowships specifically for disabled Jewish organizers, and elevating access as a priority across all of JOIN’s programs. Previously, Allegra organized low-income people with disabilities at the Boston Center for Independent Living. Allegra is new to San Francisco but has family roots here, and she’s thrilled to be building relationships and community through her work at SDA. Allegra lives in San Francisco with her partner and toddler and enjoys hiking and exploring new parts of the Bay Area.
Ammy Joseph
Administrative Coordinator
ammy@sdaction.org
Ammy Joseph is delighted to be working with Senior and Disability Action, as a person of color with disabilities who is providing care for her disabled grandmother the organization is a great fit. Born and raised in San Francisco she has witnessed the ebbs and flows of the city’s political, financial focuses and culture. Often, she emcees the California Youth Leadership Forum for Youth with Disabilities, a program that teaches young people about their rights and to advocate for themselves across the state of California. She is an avid art consumer and performer working on a comedy set.
Damara Lopez
Community Resource Program Manager
damara@sdaction.org
Damara Lopez is proud to join SDA as the new Program Manager for the Peer Advocate program. Coming from Santa Barbara, California, they moved to San Francisco in 2016 to pursue an education in Race and Resistance, Latine Studies, and Queer Ethnic Studies. Damara maintains a deep investment and love for community care work with an emphasis on mutual aid, community organizing, and resource programming focused on direct service. Their main values are based on working towards collective liberation through supporting people on their journeys of self-determination and autonomy. These values were developed in part by their mom and older sister, both of whom are strong women who raised Damara to be deeply kind, compassionate, and proactive to the world around them. Damara’s own journey has lead them to a wide range of community care work with all kinds of people, including youth, various Black/Indigenous /People of Color communities, trans/gender nonconforming people, sex workers, people who use drugs, working class and impoverished community, elders, people with mental health issues, and people with disabilities. In their free time, Damara can be found at home with their loving partner, cat, and two frogs.
Erik Greenfrost
Executive Director
erik@sdaction.org
Erik Greenfrost (genderqueer, pronoun flexible) has lived in the Bay Area since 2007 and has been deeply involved with community events, development work, and strategic visioning, including with the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus, the Silicon Valley Gay Men's Chorus, the Bears of San Francisco, and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. She has a BA in English and an MA in English Education from Michigan State University, and an MA and PhD in Education from UCSC. They were previously an English professor at City College of SF, before he joined SFJAZZ as the Development Events Manager and then the Senior Manager of Community Engagement and Partnerships.
Grace Clark
Attendant Employer Organizer & Digital Outreach Specialist
(415) 636-6410
grace@sdaction.org
Born and raised in the Twin Cities, Minnesota, Grace got their start in community organizing for two years with MN350, a climate justice organization structured somewhat similarly to SDA. Since moving to San Francisco a couple years ago, they have worked as an attendant for people who have dementia. They are passionate about disability justice and the transformative power of social movements, and are excited to be organizing with domestic employers at the intersections of labor, and senior and disability related struggles. In their free time Grace is knitting, sewing clothes and bags, teaching piano, and watching lots of movies. They live with four roommates and a dog in San Francisco.
Itzel grew up in San Diego, CA and much of their desire for community and change comes from growing up in a predominantly latina and working-class neighborhood. Throughout her career, they have gained a deep passion for grass-roots organizing and community revitalization. Itzel comes to SDA after organizing in San Diego for neighborhood beautification, community -building events, gun-control, Black Lives Matter, wrongfully incarcerated individuals, and founding a M.E.Ch.A (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán) chapter at their high school. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they learned about disability justice, which helped Itzel embrace their disabilities and find a new sense of community in our changing world. She is enthusiastic about building senior and disability power, and fighting for change. Outside of work, you can find Itzel with her cat Beans and making delicious focaccia.
Ligia Montano
Organizing & Partnership Director
(415) 912-8643
ligia@sdaction.org
Ligia comes from a working class Latino family. All her life, her parents set a good example for her. They are honest and hardworking people who have always believed that family unity is a key ingredient in reaching individual, and collective goals and objectives. She grew up in Nicaragua. She’s a single mother living in the Portola District. When her daughter was born she started to find out about the different community services in San Francisco. Community organizations such as La Raza Centro Legal, Compañeros del Barrio, Arriba Juntos, Mission Hiring Hall, and others made her realize that we can support each other in different ways. She became a parent organizer at her daughter’s pre-school, and later she worked as parent organizer at Coleman Advocates for Children and Youth. As a single mother who was isolated and struggled to make ends meet, she understands the need of supporting systems and communities that include everyone as a member of the society. She wants to stand for changes in the way our city marginalizes seniors and persons with disabilities.
Liza Mamedov
Senior and Disability
Survival School Program Coordinator
liza@sdaction.org
Born in the Bay Area to an immigrant family, Liza started organizing around immigration and refugee justice in grade school, later working with ACLU’s grassroots campaign to pass sanctuary city ordinances in the Bay Area. They founded national coalitions and led successful campaigns including winning massive wage increases, achieving improved occupational safety standards for workers with disabilities, and shutting down an exploitative company with human rights abuses.
Liza has been working in direct service program management for non-profit organizations for the last 4 years. Directly before SDA, Liza worked at a low-income housing organization, where they lived as a tenant organizing around public health and habitability issues in their apartment complex. They eventually joined the organization in a leadership role as VP of Internal Affairs and President. They now serve on the Board of Directors of NASCO, an international collective of housing and worker co-ops.
Liza has lived experience as a multiply-disabled and queer non-binary person with a particular focus on ME/CFS and Long Covid advocacy. They were raised by their grandparents and are deeply invested in senior empowerment. After work, Liza serves as a caretaker and lifelong friend for multiple seniors in their life.
In their free time, Liza can be found out with their 2 cats, listening to audiobooks, crocheting, and working on mutual aid projects. They are always happy to chat about disability justice, history, queer animated TV, and their favorite Covid-safe outdoor cafe recommendations!
Mia Satya
Transit Justice Organizer
mia@sdaction.org
Mia Satya's journey towards social justice activism began in her early years in Texas, where she championed causes of racial, economic, environmental, and gender justice. After graduating high school and moving to California, Mia's commitment to advocacy deepened as she confronted personal challenges, including homelessness and violence. Mia coordinated programs that supported homeless youth and transitional age youth and she leveraged her personal and professional insights to advocate for a more equitable distribution of city resources. During her time on the San Francisco Youth Commission, Mia co-created a landmark LGBTQ+ training for 9,000 city employees and authored resolutions supporting homeless youth. Mia has served on over 10 committees in local government including the Department of Children, Youth, and their Family's Oversight and Advisory Committee. Mia was Secretary of the San Francisco Young Democrats, Vice-Chair of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club and she represented her community as a delegate at the state and national levels. Mia graduated Mills College and various leadership programs including Emerge California and the Victory Empowerment Fellowship. Mia also enjoys cooking, karaoke and spending time with her cat Aya.
Ocean Coast
Housing Organizer
oceanbluecoast@sdaction.org
Ocean Coast is a lived experience storyteller, public policy advocate and community organizer. He has 10 years leadership experience in local, state and federal legislative advocacy working with people with lived experience in homelessness and affordable housing. His decade of public policy advocacy and community organizing experience is in homelessness and housing, labor, justice, education and healthcare. Ocean brings an intersectional race, class and oppression dynamic lens to community organizing and public policy. He is an outdoorsman, landscape photography artist and traveler. He is a teacher, presenter, event and adventure planner.
Shaya French
Director of Transit and Housing Organizing
(415) 617-5232
shaya@sdaction.org
Shaya French (they/them) has been organizing for housing and transportation justice for people with disabilities and seniors the past six years. They are committed to fighting for liberation intersectionality and practicing disability justice and consent culture values. They led campaigns that quadrupled funding for housing vouchers for people with disabilities and that stopped the public transportation system in Boston from cutting key paratransit service. They have also worked on prison abolition and reproductive justice campaigns. In their free time, Shaya writes visionary fiction about what the world will look like when our social justice movements win.