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AFRICAN AMERICAN
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Charlene Sinclair

Charlene Sinclair is the Principal of InSinc Consulting, a consulting firm that provides comprehensive grassroots organizing and political strategy in addition to targeted organizational development assistance. In this role, she provides strategic policy and power analysis, advice on grass roots organizing strategy, analysis of institutional structural strengths and weaknesses and advice on effective nonprofit management.
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In addition to her role with InSinc Consulting, Ms. Sinclair is a member of the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary. Her focus is the development of a Poverty Scholars project designed to create space for low-income leaders, grassroots organizers, public intellectuals and other thinkers to engage in deep dialogue and reflection about the intersection of spirituality and roots of struggles for social and economic justice. The project will attempt to explore theories on the intersection of social activism, social transformation and spirituality and develop possible language, theories and strategies that may serve to inform the community organizing field on how faith convictions and spiritual grounding undergird struggles for justice.

Previously Ms. Sinclair served as the Director of National Campaigns for the Center for Community Change (the Center), one of the nation’s leading organizational voices for traditionally disenfranchised communities. In this role, Ms. Sinclair led the Center’s campaign to cultivate and mobilize the power and influence of low income voters for the 2004 presidential election. This effort was highlighted by the mobilization of over 3000 low income grassroots leaders from around the country in a nationally televised dialogue with six of the then seven democratic presidential candidates.

Ms. Sinclair also served as the Director of Organizing for the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support. The Campaign, a coalition of over 1000 grassroots organizations from around the country, focused on the use of collective power to impact national policy. In her role as Director of Organizing Ms. Sinclair was responsible for the development & implementation of the Campaign's field strategy and was lead organizer of the Campaign’s efforts to restore economic safety and dignity to low-income people. Under her leadership the Campaign successfully 

• organized to win partial refundability of the child tax credit creating one of the largest infusions of federal dollars in support of low-income families,

• stalled the punitive welfare proposal pushed by President Bush and created a bi-partisan alternative calling for greater support for educational opportunities,

• restoration of benefits to documented immigrants and increased work supports

• won improvements in the food stamp program in addition to over $6 billion new dollars

Prior to joining the Center for Community Change Ms. Sinclair also served as the Deputy Director of Housing for the Commonwealth of Virginia where she was responsible for the development and implementation of the Commonwealth’s housing policies, the implementation of an array of housing development, lead abatement and homeless programs and the management of a $39 million budget.

Ms. Sinclair received a B.S. in Sociology from Trinity College in Hartford, CT and is currently a candidate for the Masters of Divinity at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

Ms. Sinclair is a long time community organizer with extensive experience in areas that include income support, youth organizing, higher education, and building the capacity of community organizing groups and networks. In addition to the experience gained from her work with grassroots organizations, Ms. Sinclair brings a strong sense of spiritual and intellectual inquiry to her work.