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