OUR PEOPLE

Eesha Pandit is co-founder of CAIP, where she brings over a decade of thought leadership and strategic communications around progressive policy. She has led policy, program, and communications work in innovative and groundbreaking ways that have shaped national and international movements for human rights, reproductive justice, and violence against women. Eesha brings expertise and experience in hard policy analysis and the organizing and coalition-building required to effect policy change. She is a founding member of the Crunk Feminist Collective and South Asian Youth in Houston Unite (SAYHU). She is a queer South Asian immigrant based in Houston, Texas, and brings her expertise as a creative strategist, respected thinker, and writer to work for CAIP’s partners. She is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and the University of Chicago, where she studied political philosophy. Eesha loves hosting long, leisurely brunches with friends, listening to political podcasts nonstop, and any afternoon spent walking through a museum.

Verónica Bayetti Flores is co-founder of CAIP, where she helps our partners to think big about their policy change goals. She has led national policy and movement building work on the intersections of immigrants' rights, health care access, young parenthood, police accountability, and LGBTQ liberation. Along with multi-issue expertise, she brings strong relationships with leaders and advocates around the country, deep expertise in intersectional policy analysis, and the big-picture strategy required to develop timely left-flank policy platforms that shift movements toward the visionary coalition-building needed to win. Verónica has worked with national, state, and local organizations to increase access to contraception and abortion, fought to decrease the scope and harms of policing and immigration enforcement, and demanded access to safe public space for queer youth of color. Verónica holds a Master’s degree in Public Health from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health. She is a New York City-based queer, immigrant Latina who brings her experience as a policy analyst, writer, speaker, facilitator, and strategic communicator to CAIP. Verónica loves plants, cooking elaborate meals for her most beloved people, and the daily artistic practice of getting dressed.

Lauren Erickson is CAIP’s Program Coordinator, providing administrative, logistic, and research support to CAIP. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Anthropology and a Master’s degree in Public Policy, both from the University of Houston. Though her main focus has been in the reproductive justice lane, she eagerly extends into other left-flank policy spaces through the visionary and intersectional work of CAIP and their incredible partners. She brings a love of research, organization, and systems-thinking along with experience in labor organizing and volunteer issue advocacy. She is especially interested in the topics of sex education & bodily autonomy, upstream sustainability interventions, and media criticism. Based in Houston, TX, she enjoys curating niche playlists, cruising secondhand shops for treasures, training in Brazilian jiu jitsu, and she firmly believes there is no such thing as a bad movie.

COLLABORATIONS

REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE ADVOCATES

Reproductive Justice Advocates is a team of collaborative communications consultants whose relationships are built on deep connections in movement work. We are rooted in reproductive justice with experience in challenging criminalization, fighting for racial justice, and ending gender-based violence. The RJA team is comprised of CAIP team Veronica Bayetti Flores and Eesha Pandit, and Shanelle Matthews, Independent Consultant and communications strategist extraordinaire. We are a team who is ready to win. We are unafraid of bold messaging and out-of-the-box strategies and tactics that speak to our base. As students of innovation, we are biased to action and forever keep our "end user" (read: audience) in mind. As strategists, we value building trusting relationships that allow us to move with agility while ensuring we are always accountable to the communities we are working with and for.

Shanelle Matthews For more than ten years, Shanelle has partnered with social justice activists, organizations, and campaigns to inspire action through storytelling and communications. From the Sierra Club, to the ACLU, to the Black Lives Matter Global Network and the Movement for Black Lives, she’s collaborated with political influencers and changemakers to transform complex ideas into persuasive political messaging that inspires people to action.

To strengthen the field of strategic communications, in 2016, Shanelle founded the Radical Communicators Network (RadComms), a go-to hub for cutting edge skills-building, values-aligned political education, and cross-movement collaboration for grassroots social justice communicators. By providing training, professional development, and networking, RadComms serves as a conduit for communicators to disseminate frameworks, information, critical inquiry and analysis into more mainstream and academic communications spaces. 

Additionally, to close a gap in progressive media training for impacted communities, Shanelle developed Channel Black, a tailored training program that prepares progressive spokespeople to make critical, real-time interventions on racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and power in the United States through the media.

In the fall of 2017, Shanelle joined The New School, a University in Manhattan as its inaugural Activist-in-Residence. Today, she is faculty there in the social justice scholarship program. She holds a degree in Journalism and New and Online Media from the Manship School of Mass Communications at Louisiana State University.

When she’s not working, Shanelle designs craft cocktails based on her favorite Black feminist books. She lives and plays in Brooklyn with her dog Nala.

PerryUndem Research/Communication

The RJA team frequently collaborates with PerryUndem on policy communications, polling, and message development. The Perry Undem team works with some of the most respected players in the world of policy. They are experts at finding patterns and insights in mountains of data, and weaving the findings into smart, actionable, products. The RJA team loves working alongside this group of creative and insightful researchers and analysts.