Erik Andrade
Jobs Director
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Erik Andrade is a father, cultural and community organizer, advocate, educator, artist,
and poet of Cape Verdean and Irish ancestry whose work centers around peace, justice, liberation, and community empowerment. With over 25 years of experience in organizing, ranging from leadership development, environmental justice, police accountability, workforce equity, diverse business engagement, and cultural organizing, Erik has dedicated his life to building pathways for historically excluded communities and historically marginalized businesses to access opportunity, economic mobility, dignity, and self-determination. As Co-Jobs Director at Action 4 Equity, Erik works to expand equitable access to quality jobs within the green economy, climate justice, construction, energy efficiency, and workforce development sectors by removing systemic barriers to employment, strengthening community partnerships, advancing fair chance hiring practices, and helping connect residents to sustainable career pathways that support economic mobility and community stability. Prior to joining Action for Equity, Erik worked in business engagement and support roles within the offshore wind and clean energy industries, helping diverse and historically underrepresented businesses access training, resources, networking opportunities, and pathways into emerging supply chains. Erik has received the 2024 Motif Magazine Social Justice Spoken Word Award, 2021 New England Artist Fellowship with National Artist Strategies, and the 2016 New Bedford NAACP Trailblazer Award for Environmental & Social Justice. His spoken word poetry has also been highlighted by national media outlets including USA Today, CNN Headline News, and WGBH’s Emmy Award-winning The Culture Show. Erik is a graduate of University of Massachusetts Dartmouth with a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Science. Through all of his work, Erik believes deeply in the power of organized people, collective action, community, culture, healing, and solidarity to transform systems and create a more just future. |
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Jason Boyd
Housing Coordinator
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Jason Boyd is a community and organizational leader experienced in stakeholder engagement, community organizing, advocacy, and budget development. Committed to leading, enhancing and maintaining meaningful community partnerships; Jason’s work has focused on youth engagement, housing advocacy, food access, transit equity and creating/expanding community driven approaches to increase civic engagement.
Jason previously served as the Executive Director of the Black Mass Coalition, a coalition which focused on state wide movement building, Black & Indigenous focused philanthropy and policy advocacy. Jason also served as the Director of Community Organizing & Resident Engagement with the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corp. and prior to that Director of Resident Services at the Harbor Point Apartment Community. Jason’s current role as the Housing Strategy Project Coordinator with Action for Equity focuses on leading A4E’s housing agenda which seeks to build community power and advocate for systemic change to dismantle the commodification of housing, ensuring access to stable, safe, and long term affordable housing for all. |
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Naamah Brown
Communications Manager
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Naamah is a dedicated Communication Specialist with over three years of experience managing social media accounts for nonprofits and small businesses. She excels in creating engaging content and implementing successful campaigns. With a strong background in sales management and customer service, Naamah is skilled in building relationships and delivering exceptional results. She is passionate about advocating in both her personal and professional life. Naamah's project management expertise, proactive approach, and problem-solving abilities make her a valuable asset to any team. She is driven to make a positive impact through social media and community engagement.
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Azia Carle
Transit and Environmental Community Organizer
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Azia Carle is a skilled visual artist and dedicated community advocate based in Dorchester, specializing in fostering engagement through public art and strategic organizing. As a successful community organizer for Action 4 Equity, Azia leverages her artistic background, public speaking abilities, and personal experiences as an African American woman, daughter, and mother to effectively advocate for Transit and Environmental Justice campaigns. Her commitment to social change is evident in her ability to build partnerships, facilitate collaborative workshops, and create inclusive spaces for dialogue within the community. By intertwining her art with activism, Azia empowers residents to voice their concerns and work collectively towards creating a more equitable environment for all.
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Mea Johnson
They/Them
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Mea has been a community and cultural organizer in the Boston area for 18+ years. They started as a parent organizer that worked with parents and families fighting for more access to quality and accessible childcare; with transit riders, fighting for a more affordable and equitable public transit system; with cultural leaders in the Black community, fighting for police accountability and CORI reform; with the Indigenous community, fighting for land sovereignty both locally and nationally. Finally, Mea has worked with residents and community leaders living in Environmental Justice communities, fighting for housing justice, the right to remain and own in their own neighborhoods, to have access to culturally appropriate healthy foods, and to have access to high quality K-12 neighborhood school pipeline of robust public schools. Mea has undertaken art as protest with their works, “The Reflection Wall Project”, 2011 (commissioned by Design Studio for Social Intervention) and large scale protest art & activations 2012-2024. Mea was selected for the Boston Foundation Neighborhood Fellowship Cohort 2021-2023. They were honored for their work in their field with the Drylongso Anti-Racism Leadership Award in 2019. Mea is an artist, writer, storyteller and parent! They are also the fur parent to their cats, Shadow and Spark! |
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Mela Bush- Miles
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Transportation Specialist
Mela Bush-Miles is a Native Bostonian who has spent decades organizing and advocating for transit equity and environmental Justice. She now serves as Coordinator of Transit Equity and EJ at Action For Equity. She spent years as the Director of Transit Oriented Development and EJ at ACE. She is a subject matter expert on all things Transit Justice. She works to empower and organize MBTA Riders fighting for Transit Justice and Equity. She formerly served as the Acting Director and Lead Organizer for The Greater Four Corners Action Coalition. Mela brings a wealth of experience connecting Labor, Climate, Culture and Community. She currently serves as Co-Chair of the Fairmount Indigo Transit Coalition. For over 20 years, Mela has been championing the fight for transit justice along the Fairmount corridor in Boston. She has been an invited guest lecturer, panelist and ambassador for Environmental Justice, Community Engagement, Organizing , Transit Oriented development and Climate Justice, motivating and activating students locally and nationally in conferences, colleges and universities.
Mela is a 2007 Senior Fellow of the Environmental Leadership Program and an Aspen Ideas Fellow (2013) |
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Marvin Martin
Executive Director
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Marvin Martin is the Executive Director of Action for Equity, a coalition of community organizations promoting race and class equity through policy and organizing initiatives. Marvin Martin has over 30 years community organizing experience in Baltimore and Boston, particularly on issues such as land usage, housing policy, transportation & environmental justice and public safety. He has also served as the ED of the Greater Four Corners Action Coalition and the Greater Roxbury Neighborhood Authority and had stints at Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Neighbor to Neighbor and East Baltimore/Midway CDC among others. He is the recipient of many awards, including the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston Open Doors Award and fellowships, including the Barr Fellows.
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Weezy Waldstein
Job's Coordinator
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Weezy Waldstein—Weezy Waldstein, now Action’s Jobs Coordinator, spent a decade as a shipyard welder before returning to school after the Quincy Shipyard closed. She led strategic planning and operations consulting with national unions and global non-profits including Bakery Workers, Carpenters, Partners in Health and Amnesty USA, serving clients seeking to shape a high skill, high wage economy and connect workers to good jobs through multi-stakeholder partnerships. At CommCorp, she served as the Director of the Workplace Learning Group, with responsibilities for its initial incumbent worker training demonstration projects and development of incumbent worker training programming for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. She helped start the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute as the Director of Labor Market Participation, documenting high road partnerships. In 2002, she founded and then led until 2017 the program that became SEIU 615/32BJ’s SEIU Property Services New England Training Fund. She has a master’s degree from MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
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Tarshia Green-WilliamsDeputy Director
Tarshia Green-Williams serves as the Deputy Director of Action for Equity, where she works alongside community leaders, coalition partners, and residents to advance racial, economic, and environmental justice throughout Greater Boston. She brings more than 20 years of experience organizing alongside workers, tenants, faith communities, and grassroots organizations to build power and create lasting systemic change.
Throughout her career, Tarshia has led local and statewide campaigns focused on workers' rights, equitable access to quality jobs, climate justice, immigrant rights, and community leadership. Before joining Action for Equity, she served as Organizing Director at Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, where she led organizing strategy and developed leadership training programs. She strengthened partnerships across labor unions, community organizations, and advocacy groups. She also previously served as Deputy Director and Jobs Director at Action for Equity, helping lead initiatives that expanded access to family-sustaining jobs for BIPOC communities and secured more than $1 million in funding to advance workforce and climate equity. Tarshia believes that the people most impacted by injustice should be at the center of creating the solutions. Her leadership is grounded in relationship-building, collective action, and the development of community leaders who can advocate for themselves and their neighborhoods. She is passionate about bringing people together across movements to advance equitable access to good jobs, affordable housing, reliable public transit, environmental justice, and thriving communities. A lifelong organizer, Tarshia is committed to building organizations where people feel heard, valued, and empowered to lead. She approaches her work with humility, collaboration, and the belief that lasting change happens when communities organize together around a shared vision for justice. Outside of work, Tarshia enjoys spending time with her family, gardening, and mentoring emerging leaders. She believes that cultivating a garden and cultivating community both require patience, care, and a deep belief in what's possible. |
