Agnes Marsala is the Team Lead for the Art & Video team. She has also led People Over Pipelines as president since its founding in 2015, and serves as Vice President of the anti-warehouse sprawl group, Save Old York. Agnes has a 30-plus year background in multi-media and social media production

Amber Saravia is the Live Outreach Team Lead. She is currently pursuing a Rutgers undergraduate degree in environmental policy with a minor in sustainability. At Rutgers, she’s the Outreach Liaison for the Latin American Womxn’s Organization. She also spent a lot of her time at Rutgers doing grassroots organizing through her work on campus with the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG), a student-led nonpartisan advocacy group that organizes on issues ranging from democracy to public health to higher education affordability. 

April Nicklaus is the Team Lead for Messaging and the Deputy Lead for the Executive Team. She studied environmental policy at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and now works for a network of public interest nonprofit organizations. April has a robust history with grassroots organizing through her work on campus with the New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG), a student-led nonpartisan advocacy group that organizes on issues ranging from democracy to environment to consumer protection. 

Barry Bendar is the Data Management Team Lead, Deputy Lead for Live Outreach, and an original VCNJ member. He has been an Information Technology professional for 42 years and specializes in Database Administration.  He’s been a Political Activist since 2002 and can see that the only answer to the mess that our electoral system is in, is ranked choice voting. 

Brian Varela

Brian Varela is the Lead for Volunteer Onboarding.  Brian is a serial entrepreneur and holds an MBA from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina. Brian points to his meeting with and subsequent endorsement by Andrew Yang and the Forward party as a pivotal moment in his drive toward making ranked-choice voting a reality for New Jersey. The binary choice of traditional voting often forces the majority of voters to choose between two candidates that are promoted by the status quo party leadership, forcing many to feel like their voices and perspectives are marginalized or fully unrepresented.  Democracy cannot thrive in darkness, it is time to not only shine a light on the issue but to take action to ensure it thrives in the sun.

Herb Tarbous is a co-founder of VCNJ. He is a retired systems engineer with over four decades of experience analyzing, designing, debugging, and documenting complex systems.  He is a political activist focusing on electoral reform in New Jersey and is passionate about ending the toxic political polarization which plagues us and he is working hard to enable ranked-choice voting as a major step towards the goal of political diversity instead of political polarization.

 

 Kamuela Tillman is the proud and excited Team Lead for the Fundraising Team. As a former Merrill Lynch employee and current special education teacher and grassroots activist, she knows all too well about the importance of putting your money towards a movement for change. She’s fired up to bring ranked-choice voting to the forefront of local and state election reforms in a way that restores the value of the voice of the people while garnering financial support from donors and investors.
  Kyle Lawrence

Renée Steinhagen is the Executive Team Lead. She has been the Executive Director of New Jersey Appleseed since its inception in 1998, a nonprofit state-based advocacy organization focused on health care, government and corporate accountability, election reform and environmental and community health issues. She welcomes the opportunity to work on a broad-based  grassroots campaign, which involves numerous people with varied backgrounds and skills, all of whom are focused on achieving a systemic upgrade in our federal, state, and local elections.