Woods Fund Chicago Welcomes New Board Officers and Committee Chairs
Woods Fund Chicago is ushering in 2024 with two exciting additions to our Board of Directors: Jose Oliva, Campaigns Director at HEAL (Health Environment Agriculture and Labor) Food Alliance, and Quinn K. Rallins, Civil Rights Lawyer at Loevy & Loevy.
Jose Oliva was born in Xelaju, Guatemala. In 1985 he and his family were forced to flee the civil war and come to the US. Once in Chicago he was called to be Executive Director of Casa Guatemala where he began to organize day-laborers in Chicago’s street corners. He founded the Chicago Interfaith Workers’ Center and then became the Coordinator of Interfaith Worker Justice’s National Workers’ Centers Network. Jose served in several leadership positions at the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, the national organization of restaurant workers. Jose was the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, a national coalition of food-worker organizations that collectively represents over 350,000 workers.
Jose is a 2017 James Beard Award recipient and a 2018 American Food Hero Awardee and a 2020 Castanea Fellow. Currently he is the Campaigns Director at HEAL (Health Environment Agriculture and Labor) Food Alliance, a national multi-sector coalition representing over two million people in the food system. He also chairs the Chicago Area Food System Fund and serves on the boards of the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United and Woods Fund Chicago.
"As an immigrant and lifelong organizer, Woods Fund Chicago has often been one of the only philanthropic partners that understand and are committed to walking hand-in-hand with our communities. When the opportunity emerged to be on the Board, I eagerly grasped on with pride and an unwavering commitment to Woods Fund Chicago’s mission and values."
Quinn K. Rallins is a civil rights lawyer and civic leader. He has long been engaged in the fight for racial and economic justice. Currently, Quinn practices law at the Loevy & Loevy, and litigates cases on behalf of those seeking vindication for the violation of their civil rights and focuses on cases involving wrongful convictions, police shootings and other excessive force, false arrests, free speech rights, race discrimination, and other violations of the U.S. Constitution. In 2023, a jury awarded his clients $33 million, one of the largest police misconduct verdicts in Illinois history.
Prior to Loevy, Quinn served as the inaugural Director of the Justice, Equity, and Opportunity (JEO) Initiative for the State of Illinois, and Deputy Chief of Staff for the Lt. Governor, where he designed and implemented policies and programs across state agencies, advised decision making across branches of government, and co-managed six governmental agencies. Most significantly, Quinn helped to advance criminal justice reform policy, including the successful effort to outlaw wealth-based pretrial incarceration in Illinois and led implementation of the Restore, Reinvest, and Renew Program, which invests 25% of net revenue collected into communities with the highest rates of unemployment, poverty, gun violence, and incarceration.
Quinn has been a professor and visiting lecturer, and is on faculty at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law and the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy. He serves on numerous boards and committees, including serving as President of the Board of Directors for the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. For his commitment to justice, Quinn has received numerous awards, including recognition as a Harvard Galbraith Inequality Scholar, Economic and Political Studies Scholar at Cambridge University.
He began his career as a community organizer, working in both the Deep South and Northeast to advance racial and economic opportunity on fair housing, voting rights, adequate schools, and safe neighborhoods. He was born on the South Side of Chicago, before receiving his B.A. from Morehouse College where he was a Rhodes Scholar Finalist, M.Sc. in Comparative Social Policy from the University of Oxford, and J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law where he was a Public Interest Law Scholar.
“I joined Woods Fund Chicago because of its unwavering commitment to supporting community organizers and organizations that are building power with low-income and communities of color.”
We look forward to working with Jose and Quinn and know that their combined experiences and expertise, personal connections to Chicago, shared support of community organizing and advocacy, and unyielding determination will be powerful gains to the work of Woods Fund Chicago and our Board of Directors. Congratulations Jose and Quinn!
Woods Fund Chicago is also excited to announce and congratulate the newly elected (and re-elected!) Board Committee Chairs:
Alice Kim, Director, Pozen Family Center for Human Rights, University of Chicago // Vice Chair & Governance Committee Chair
Matt Reilein, CEO, National Equity Fund // Treasurer & Finance Committee Chair
Dayo Harris, Principal, Village Leadership Academy // Secretary & Program Committee Chair
Alice, Matt, and Dayo will serve a one-year term alongside L. Anton Seals, Jr., Lead Steward at Grow Greater Englewood, who will complete the third year of his term as Board Chair in 2024, and re-elected Board Officers Kimberly Rudd, President of Rudd Resources LLC, Dr. Stacey Sutton, Associate Professor, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at University of Illinois at Chicago, and Dr. Lourdes Torres, Professor, Vincent de Paul Professor, Latin American, and Latino Studies at Depaul University.
Thank you to the Woods Fund Chicago Board of Directors for your ongoing service, and we look forward to the year ahead!