OUR TEAM
KRASI STAYKOV - SENIOR ORGANIZER - Krasi is a community organizer with six years of experience in higher education advocacy. He recently earned his B.A. in American Studies from Pomona College, having transferred there from the University of Louisville. At Pomona, he successfully unionized his undergraduate dining services colleagues, integrating them into the existing UNITE HERE! Local 11 unit. He also co-led the Claremont Student Worker Alliance, an organization focused on labor rights in the Claremont Colleges and the surrounding area. Krasi’s commitment to student-led organizing brought him to Class Action, where he collaborates with student leaders to build their campaigns.
NAZLI DAKAD - SENIOR ORGANIZER - Nazli is a recent graduate from Stanford University with a B.S. and M.S. in Earth Systems where she studied the science and psychology of environmental change. As a second-generation Turkish immigrant and granddaughter of teachers, Nazlı believes in the importance of using her privilege as a college graduate to create positive change. At Stanford, she led a career funneling campaign as a student organizer. Now, she works to make a meaningful career the status quo for elite graduates as a career funneling organizer at Class Action.
RYAN CIESLIKOWSKI - LEAD ORGANIZER, CO-FOUNDER, DIRECTOR - Ryan recently graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in International Relations and an M.A. in Sociology. His master’s thesis, “Buying Into Selling Out: How Graduating Stanford Students Understand Corporate Career Funneling and Justify Their Decision to Participate,” won the Sociology department's award for best master's thesis. During COVID, Ryan organized volunteers to provide childcare for underserved medical workers, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars in child care costs. Since then, he's trained in community organizing with Marshall Ganz who led the 2008 Obama campaign’s grassroots organizing efforts.
JAMES MURPHY - SENIOR FELLOW - James's work in higher education has included journalism, research, and advocacy. A former academic who taught at Emory University, University of California-Berkeley, and Harvard University, his entry into college access advocacy initially came through work with community based organizations that put him into direct contact with highly talented students whose lack of resources and opportunities put them at a strong disadvantage in the college admissions process. James has written about college access for The Atlantic, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, Chronicle of Higher Education, and more than a dozen other publications. His policy work has been covered by the New York Times, USA Today, ABC News, CBS News, NPR, and other news outlets. James's work at Class Action focuses on admissions reform.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
EVAN MANDERY - CO-FOUNDER - Evan Mandery is a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York. A longtime critic of legacy preference and other inequities of access, Evan is the author most recently of Poison Ivy: How Elite Colleges Divide Us. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Evan has written seven other books, including four novels, and won Emmy and Peabody Awards in 2019.
AMY BINDER - Amy is the SNF-Agora Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from Northwestern University in 1998 and her BA in Anthropology from Stanford University in 1986. She was on the sociology faculty at the University of California San Diego from 2003 to 2023 and, before that, at the University of Southern California from 1998 to 2003. She wrote the two most cited articles on career funneling and is an expert in student activism.
PAOLA SANTANA - Paola is an executive director at Glendale College Foundation. Before that, she served as a strategy officer at Lumina Foundation supporting states’ efforts to increase attainment and eliminate racial disparities. A first-generation and community college transfer student, Santana holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s in higher education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
MOLLY MAGUIRE - With over 14 years of experience in higher education policy and budgeting, Molly is a seasoned expert across the federal, state, and local levels. Her expertise spans policy analysis, strategic planning, and stakeholder engagement. She has contributed to policy design in the New York Governor's Office, worked at the President’s Office at Hunter College, and served as the Director of State and Federal Policy for the Campaign for College Opportunity, where she helped design California's AB 1780, banning legacy admissions in the state's private institutions. Molly holds a Bachelor's Degree from St. Andrews University in Scotland, and a Masters in Public Policy from the University of Michigan.
MADISON HARVEY - Madison is a junior at Brown University concentrating in Cognitive Neuroscience and Science, Technology, and Society. Committed to community work, Madison strives to use her research and advocacy to advance educational equity and increase access to opportunities. Madison has held various leadership roles in Brown's Students for Educational Equity, serving as co-lead of the community engagement team, president, and senior advisor. Her engagement with Class Actions has taken many forms, from speaking at open forums to serving as co-chair for the conference. Currently, Madison holds the position of student member on the Class Actions Board.
KATE GRANT - Kate is the CEO of the Fistula Foundation, the global leader in fistula treatment across more than 20 countries. Under her leadership, the Foundation has earned 16 consecutive four-star ratings from Charity Navigator and helped build new women's hospitals in Bangladesh, DR Congo, Kenya, and Tanzania. Before joining the Foundation, Grant served on the House Foreign Affairs Committee staff and as deputy chief of staff at USAID, and holds a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. She previously worked as an advertising executive managing campaigns for Fortune 500 companies and graduated with honors from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business.
ZANE KHIRY - Zane is a recent graduate of Amherst College with a B.A in History & Philosophy. At Amherst, Zane sat as a class representative on the student government, and helped lead the Better Amherst Initiative, a student-activist group focused on ensuring Amherst better supports its students in pursuing social impact careers. Now a master’s student at Princeton Theological Seminary, he is a passionate advocate for both racial and educational equity and justice, and is excited to continue this work with Class Action.
BOARD OF ADVISORS
PETER SINGER - Peter is a renowned moral philosopher and the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. He is the author of Animal Liberation, in which he argues for vegetarianism, and the essay "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," which became one of the most influential philosophical texts of the twentieth century.
NICHOLAS ZEPPOS - An esteemed legal scholar, teacher, and higher education leader, Nick served for more than a decade as Vanderbilt University’s eighth Chancellor. During his tenure, Nick championed a move toward more equitable admissions making him an expert in both higher education administration and equitable admissions.
HARDIN COLEMAN - Hardin is a professor and the dean emeritus of Boston University's Center for Character and Social Responsibility. He has co-edited several handbooks, including The Handbook of School Counseling and The Intersection of Race, Class, and Gender in Multicultural Counseling. He currently serves on the Boston Public School Committee.
LOFTON HOLDER - Lofton is the co-founder of Pine Street, an award-winning asset management firm with a particular focus on women and minority portfolio managers. Lofton is actively engaged in the community and is particularly focused on ideas to advance educational opportunity and student achievement for young people from low-income backgrounds as well as students of color. Lofton received a BA in Political Science from Columbia University and a MBA from the Yale School of Organization and Management.
NATASHA WARIKOO - Natasha is a Professor of Sociology at Tufts University. A former Guggenheim Fellow and high school teacher, Warikoo is an expert on racial and ethnic inequality in education. She released two books in 2022, Race at the Top: Asian Americans and Whites in Pursuit of the American Dream in Suburban Schools and Is Affirmative Action Fair? The Myth of Equity in College Admissions. In addition to her academic work, Warikoo is co-chair of the Scholars Strategy Network Boston Chapter, which aims to connect scholars, policymakers, civic leaders, and journalists.
HERNAN QUINTAS - Hernan Quintas, is an anchor and reporter for Telemundo 15 news, reporting to the residents of the Coachella Valley and surrounding areas. Before returning to the news, Hernan served as press secretary and later as district director and communications director for Congressman Raul Ruiz. During this period, he had the opportunity to work with community members, local, national and international leaders, as well as high-level political figures.
MASON QUINTERO - Mason recently graduated from Amherst College with a B.A in Physics. While at Amherst, he co-founded the Better Amherst Initiative, an organization that lobbies administrators, faculty, and the board of trustees to send more students into public interest jobs and have more classes that teach students how to solve real-world issues.
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