Change Corps Academy

Learn more about the program

Change Corps Academy recruits, trains and places young organizers in key locations to work on issues from gun violence to women’s health. Our training consists of classroom briefings, discussions and role-plays complemented by guided work in the field — all led either by our staff or by other talented and experienced organizers leading the social change movement. When their training is complete, our organizers will have an opportunity to become part of a wave of new organizers who will keep pushing and prodding our country forward for years to come, as we will also help place Change Corps Academy graduates into leading organizations and campaigns.

Our trainers

Ryan Doyle

Ryan Doyle is the executive director for Change Corps Academy. Previously, Ryan worked for Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing, as an organizer in the Class of 2010 and then as an assistant organizing director for four years. In this role, Ryan helped to run Green Corps’ classroom training, directly managed dozens of Green Corps organizers, and developed and led field campaigns on behalf of partner organizations, including Green Corps’ successful partnership with Catapult Campaigns to convince agribusiness giant Wilmar International and its partner Kellogg’s to adopt deforestation-free palm oil policies.

Manny Rin

Manny is an assistant organizing director with Change Corps Academy. After graduating from UC Davis with a degree in Environmental Policy in 2012, he worked as a campus organizer with the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG). As a social change organizer over the last five years, Manny has helped to recruit and train hundreds of student activists, won grassroots campaigns to protect the environment, and helped to register more than 2,000 student voters in the 2012 election. Manny was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Hannah Adams

Hannah is an assistant organizing director with Change Corps Academy. Hannah graduated from Green Corps, the field school for environmental organizing, in August 2014. During her Green Corps year she ran campaigns for groups such as Food & Water Watch, to stop the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms, and the Sierra Club, to retire a coal-fired power plant. Hannah attended Wesleyan University and earned a dual degree in Latin American Studies and Government. She got her start organizing in college through canvassing for the Working Families Party, interning for Make the Road New York and organizing for SEIU 21LA in New Orleans. In her senior year she coordinated the get-out-the-vote effort with Sen. Chris Murphy’s campaign in Middletown, Conn.

Claudia Iglesias

Claudia Iglesias is the recruitment director with Change Corps Academy. She recently moved to Colorado from Las Vegas, Nev. There, she worked as an organizer and activist for the Nevada State Democratic Party, Working Families Win/Americans for Democratic Action, the Laborers' International Union of North America, and various other social and economic change organizations and nonprofits. Claudia graduated from the University of Nevada in Las Vegas with a degree in interdisciplinary studies with concentrations in political science, history, and anthropology. She is originally from El Paso, Texas.

Our guest trainers have included:

Ashley Pinedo

Ashley is the national training director at Organizing for Action, a grassroots organization dedicated to training a generation of community organizers ready to civically engage and fight for change at the grassroots level. At OFA, Ashley oversees a training program that equips volunteers across the country with the skills they need to win issue campaigns (including advanced strategic planning, press outreach and digital organizing), brings talented new organizers into the progressive movement, and nurtures the skills of leaders already working in the progressive world. She also teaches a course on Issue Advocacy and Community Organizing at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

Michael Crawford

Michael Crawford is the director of online programs for Freedom to Marry, where he manages the organization’s websites, email program, online fundraising and social media presence. He has a wide range of experience in political advocacy, new media and grassroots organizing. He was a leading strategist for the successful campaign to win freedom to marry in Washington, D.C., and co-founded D.C. for Marriage.

Cecile Richards

Cecile Richards is the president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Planned Parenthood Action Fund. She is a nationally-respected leader in the field of women’s health and reproductive rights, and, as president of Planned Parenthood, leads a movement that has worked for nearly 100 years to build a safer and healthier world for women and teens.

Van Jones

Van Jones is a CNN political contributor, regularly appearing across the network's programming and special political coverage. Jones has founded and led four not-for-profit organizations engaged in social and environmental justice. These include: The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Color of Change, Green for All, Rebuild The Dream, and Dream Corps. He is the author of two New York Times best-selling books, The Green Collar Economy and Rebuild the Dream. In 2009, Jones worked as the green jobs advisor to President Barack Obama.