Who We Are

Tracy Zeluff

Tracy has been an activist for justice since her youth – she spent the 1980s all over the Americas honing the community organizing, fundraising and lobbying skills she has since used to design and win campaigns and to help build political power for grassroots organizations. She then started her 17 year career with the Service Employees Union in 1993 as a Political Organizer at a local union before moving on to the SEIU CA State Council in 1997 where she eventually served as the State Council’s Field Director.

Since our founding in 2009, Tracy has been an integral part of the GroundWorks team. Her commitment to labor unions – political work and organizing – and her lifelong passion for fighting for the progressive candidates and issues that affect the community and working families are unparalleled.

Tracy lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a menagerie of pets.  Their two grown daughters, one grown son and two adorable granddaughters live nearby.

Lea Grundy

Lea fell in love with organizing in the early 1990s when she began organizing janitors and hospital and nursing home workers on the East Coast. She eventually moved to California where she was part of the team that developed the Jessie B. Malcolm Homecare Workers Center representing 8,000 Alameda County homecare workers in four languages.

Lea’s extensive experience in popular and participatory education, in particular in her role working with the UC Berkeley Labor Center, inform her work and her dedication to creating opportunities for people to find their voices and power at work and in their communities. At GroundWorks Lea brings her passion for organizing, her strong belief in the resilience of people to fight for what’s right and her commitment to being a part of the struggle to all the work we do.

Lea has a Masters degree in Public Policy from U.C. Berkeley and lives in the Bay Area with her family.

Joanna Riccardi

Joanna began her career in politics in Denver as a Legislative Aide for the Senate Joint Budget Committee where she was deeply affected by the barriers to constituents’ participating in the process. She then became Political Coordinator of SEIU Local 2028 in San Diego where she built a successful, record-breaking political fundraising and member engagement program; later filling the role of the Political Coordinator at the SEIU California State Council. Joanna has dedicated her career to engaging members of the community to get involved, make their voices heard and elect candidates who will protect the core values of working men and women, better the community and further a progressive agenda.

At GroundWorks, Joanna will ensure your community, staff and volunteers are trained to win. She has extensive training, public speaking and event-planning experience involving groups from hundreds to thousands of participants. She is skilled at managing everything from set up, logistics and recruitment to “Day Of” coordination with participants, media and staff.

Joanna graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Colorado State University with a B.A. in Political Science. She currently lives in Southern California.

Our Team Gets It Done!

At Groundworks we know from experience that person-to-person contact makes a difference. Our team strives to engage people to care on a deeper level, to become motivated to engage others in the community, and to organize around progressive candidates and issues that affect working families. We work hard and hold ourselves to the highest standards. We know when to take risks and see them as opportunities to make real and lasting change for the communities we come from ourselves.

Nadia Abrica

2015

Brian Ambriz

2016

Eddie Ardon

2013

Sandra Armijo

2012

Candy Bautista

2021

Laurie Carmelengo

2018

Edeny Casey

2020

Victor Costa

2020

Debbie Eaton

2016

John Esther

2010

Jacqueline Gonzales

2015

Gabby Guorola

2020

Amy Hines-Shaikh

2021

La Bomba Jackson

2012

Earl Johnson, Jr.

2010

Martha Kreeger

2020

Claudia Lopez

2011

Bridget McConaughy

2020

Cecilia Minalga

2019

Rudy Espinoza Murray

2020

Monica Quinonez

2014

Mariana Rivas-Rodriguez

2015

Daleelah Sada

2020

Liz Zuniga

2014