Board of Directors

Elissa Roy - Community representative

Elissa Roy is a passionate nonprofit leader who believes in the solidarity economy and is working to advance racial and economic equity. She has been a Richmond resident for over five years and has special expertise in fundraising and cooperatives. She currently serves on the boards of the Berkeley Student Cooperative and the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Golden Gate chapter. Her development experience includes helping with year-end fundraising for the Women’s Foundation of California, serving on the Principal Gifts team at the University of California, Berkeley for nearly five years, and most recently as Development Director at Community Action Marin. This past year, she was invited to join the fundraising committee for the international organization, the Initiative for Equality.

REGINA CELESTIN WILLIAMS - Public good representative, Board secretary

Regina grew up in Richmond, CA before receiving her Bachelors in Urban Studies from Stanford University and later her Master of City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania. Regina has spent her entire career working towards housing and economic justice through affordable housing and community development. She is the current Executive Director of SV@Home in San Jose, CA where she lives with her husband and two children. Regina previously worked as the Director of Housing Development at First Community Housing (FCH) where she was responsible for securing funding for and managing the design and development of FCH’s affordable housing pipeline. Regina has been a board member of the Durham Community Land Trust and other emerging developer groups in the San Jose area. She has worked for the National Development Council’s East Team providing housing and economic development consulting services to several East Coast municipalities and worked at the National Housing Trust where she structured the financing and oversaw the rehabilitation of affordable housing properties employing green construction features.

SASHA (Sunny) GRAHAM - Board Co-Chair

Sasha is a homegrown Richmond resident and former co-coordinator of the Building Power Fellowship. Sunny is an active member of the Contra Costa chapter of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) and was the former Board Chair of ACCE Action, a statewide governing body of the organizations 15,000 members across California.  As a formally displaced Richmond resident, Sasha actively works on tenants rights and economic justice issues and is a graduate of UC Berkeley Law School.

Alex Acuña

Alex is a Stewardship Coordinator with the Oakland Community Land Trust, where he supports OakCLT’s tenants through the process of transitioning into homeowners, runs community trainings on CLTs, and works on local policy. Prior to OakCLT, he worked on disaster resilience at Enterprise Community Partners, supported research on local development in the Bronx with The Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative and the MIT Community Innovators Lab, and was the Lead Community Organizer for the Los Angeles chapter of the Alliance of Californians for Community empowerment (ACCE). Alex’s commitment to housing was forged by his experience almost going through foreclosure as a child, and then working alongside ACCE’s Home Defenders League in the wake of the foreclosure crisis. Though he now lives in Oakland, he is a 4th generation Richmondite. In his free time Alex enjoys biking, dancing at weddings, being a tour guide, and occasionally painting. He holds a Masters in City Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Bachelors in Urban and Environmental Policy from Occidental College.

Randy Joseph - Board Co-Chair

Randy Joseph is a Community Organizer in Richmond, CA. Moving from Queens, NY in 2000, Randy fell in love with the city and works to do many things to advocate for community members, from Air Quality, Community-Police Relations, Public Safety, Youth Empowerment, and Housing. Randy currently works at the RYSE Center, and also serves on the Reimagining Public Safety Task Force, Community Police Review Commission, and is a member of Reimaging Richmond.

Leslie Lindo - Board treasurer

Leslie Lindo has dedicated over a decade of her career working to change the systems that have been most extractive on social and natural ecosystems. Over the last 7 years, she has focused on identifying and advancing solutions to address the wealth disparities in economically marginalized communities. 

As the Managing Director of the Olamina Fund at Candide Group, Leslie works on shifting the power dynamics of traditional finance and increasing access to capital in communities across the U.S. that have experienced historic and intentional exclusion from our economy. In her last role as VP of Strategic Partnerships at Common Future, she brought together diverse stakeholders around racial equity and impact investing, equitable financing tools, democratic governance and financial structures, integrated entrepreneurial ecosystems, and shared ownership of land, housing, and business. 

Though coming to this work through her own journey, Leslie attributes her community-centered focus to her father, who dedicated his life to the economic empowerment of Black communities across the country by developing shared ownership models. Leslie's first step in this direction was establishing a nonprofit entity to gain site control of vacant buildings and lots to develop community-determined projects.

Leslie has training in sustainable building, strategic planning, and facilitative leadership for social change. She has proudly served on executive committees for multiple boards, including The Green Chamber of Greater Phoenix and Oakland Grown, and currently serves as board co-chair for the New Economy Coalition.