Wilnelia Rivera, President
She / Her
“If we want a better future, we need to think and live beyond silos. We must participate in local planning and political processes that affect our everyday life and future (for all existing generations and those yet to be born). With action, comes change. With patience and strategy, change can occur at scale.” - Wilnelia Rivera, Founder of Rivera Consulting, Inc.
From leading statewide policy campaigns for the reform of the criminal record system to integrated voter engagement and candidate campaigns, Wilnelia Rivera, Founder of Rivera Consulting, Inc., leads a movement building firm that inspires and enables social change while operationalizing solutions for the 21st century. Wilnelia is a political strategist, urban planner, and project management professional. Her journey began in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where her childhood was defined by the duality of injustice and persistent hope - planting her lifetime commitment to social change. This commitment took her first to the neighborhoods of Chicago and Detroit as a union organizer and then back home with Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts (N2N-MA).
At N2N-MA, she took a deep dive in the grassroots and progressive political movement of the Commonwealth, where she represented over 18,000 members. Together they elected dozens of candidates to political office, recruited 8,000 new members, and ushered a new era of criminal justice reform with the Commonwealth CORI Coalition. During this time, she also deepened her professional experience, through strategic partnerships and learning journeys that brought her to Los Angeles, Oakland, New Mexico, Miami, and New York City (Brooklyn and Bronx), Mondragon, and Venezuela. The course of Wilnelia’s career shifted when she joined Governor Deval Patrick’s senior staff as the Director of External Affairs, ushering a profound phase of public service in state government. She then established a cross-sector early college consortium at Madison Park Vocational High School and now is the Founder and Principal of Rivera, Consulting, Inc.
Wilnelia’s track record of success thrives at the intersection of cross-sector collaboration, engagement, and research. By focusing on the nexus of people, planning, and politics, Wilnelia has come to understand that the most important economic and social issues from race, class, the environment, education, transportation to healthcare are all interconnected. Her professional career and academic work centers on social justice, collective prosperity, and sustainability, key ingredients to producing successful results for clients but most important, the community at large. She has created change from the street level to the ivory tower in the political and public policy making process.
Wilnelia holds a B.A. in International Relations, B.A. in Women's Studies and an M.A. in Urban and Environmental Policy & Planning from Tufts University. She is the past recipient of the Mel King Fellowship at Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s CoLab, focusing on public policy research related to urban politics, economic democracy, community planning, and sustainable community economic development.
Email: wilnelia@riveraconsult.com
DARSHAN KHALSA, VICE PRESIDENT
She/Her
Darshan Khalsa became Rivera Consulting’s Vice-President in January 2020. Drawing on more than 20 years of leadership experience in social justice organizations and her identities as a queer, able-bodied, cis- South Asian woman of color, she provides consulting and coaching to organizations and individuals seeking transformation, and she holds professional expertise in executive leadership, organizational development, and crisis management.
Nearly a quarter-century ago, just out of college, Darshan Khalsa moved to Washington, DC from her hometown of Vacaville, CA with the vague idea that she wanted to make a difference in the world. Since 2005, she has had the privilege of working in multiracial organizations led by smart, strategic women of color with incredible visions – and helping them move from ideas to action. Her leadership roles have encompassed strategic and organizational development, finance and operations, HR, fundraising, and communications. She is grateful for the many opportunities she’s had to take on strategic leadership roles, to grow staff and programs, and to guide organizations through both lean economic times and tremendous investment.
Until 2018, Darshan was the Organizational Growth Director at Forward Together, leading human resources and operations for a multi-racial organization that works with community leaders and organizations to transform culture and policy to catalyze social change. From 2014 to 2016, she managed operations and human resources at Asian Health Services, a community health center in Oakland, CA. She has also served as the Managing Director at the Center for Media Justice, Deputy Director at Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity (URGE), and Deputy Director at the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development. She is currently chair of URGE’s Board of Directors and served on the Board of Directors of the Third Wave Foundation from 2009 to 2014.
Darshan loves thinking and talking about movement in many forms, about meaning and joy and healing, and about how we transform ourselves, each other and the world. She is a Certified Professional Diversity Coach through Coach Diversity Institute and privately provides holistic life coaching, meeting facilitation, and occasional yoga teaching. She now lives in Oakland, CA, where you can find her walking around Lake Merritt or hiking around the Bay Area, experimenting with vegan cooking, reading random articles recommended by Pocket, or generally wandering with her feet and her mind.
gina Christo, Senior Consultant Associate
She / Her
Gina Christo grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts. After graduating from high school in three years, Gina left for Ohio to study Women, Gender, and Sexality Studies from The College of Wooster. There, she completed her senior thesis entitled “Women Undeterred: A Comparative Study of How Lesbian & Heterosexual Young Professional Women Perceive Motherhood.”
Since graduation, she has dedicated her time to electing progressive candidates and the organizations who support them. In 2014, Gina was the Campaign Manager for Ohio House District 36th. In a challenging year for Ohio Democrats, she led a campaign that was seen as one of the only viable State Representative races. After the cycle, Gina worked as a Legislative Aide in the Ohio State House for Kathleen Clyde. She worked with her official side team, and political stakeholders, in preparation for the 2018 Secretary of State campaign. In 2016, GIna joined former Governor Ted Strickland’s Senate race as a Deputy Finance Director and raised nearly a million dollars from Central Ohio alone. After a devastating electoral year, Gina was brought on at EMILY’s List to travel the country to raise money from grassroots level donors. It was there that she learned the power of connecting with individuals who are seen as modest donors, but have untapped passion and commitment. This experience deeply informed the work Gina did as the Finance Director on Ayanna Pressley’s insurgent Congressional campaign - which $1.3 million dollars without any corporate PAC money, through grassroots fundraising events, donor stewardship, and digital outreach.
Gina is in this work in this work because she want to make this country a better place, and sees no truer way to do that than by supporting organizations and candidates who share her values. She want to use my privilege to demand space in our societies institutions, to support communities of color as they step forward and demand the respect they deserve. Through clear eyed candidate recruitment and grassroots organizing, Gina will continue to do this work until this country has reached its full potential.
JOn HILLMAN, Senior Consultant Associate
He/His
Jon Hillman comes to Rivera Consulting Inc. with a passion for understanding the intersection of policy, politics, and community engagement. After growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and received his bachelor's degree in political science. Following graduation in 2008, he became an organizing intern for Senator Barack Obama and was eventually hired to organize a large part of northern Wisconsin for his presidential campaign. The campaign bug bit him hard, and he began a long career in political organizing.
In 2015, he became a Community Engagement Liaison for the Boston 2024 Organizing Committee. A seminal learning experience, Jon worked with community activists and planners across several Boston neighborhoods with the goal of bringing a sustainable and equitable olympic games to Boston. Seeing the possibilities of community-centered policy engagement inspired him to attend Northeastern University, where he received his Master’s degree in public policy in August of 2017. He served as a Health and Human Services researcher for the City of Newton, Massachusetts, designing and implementing a mixed-methods project that assessed the opportunities and barriers to preschool utilization for low and moderate-income families. Later, he joined a project team led by Professor Alicia Sasser-Modestino at Northeastern University that analyzed the effects of the Summerworks Jobs Program on the behavior of Boston Public School students.
Prior to shifting into the world of public policy, Jon organized for Democrats across the state and Greater Boston area. In 2012, he was the Field Director for both Joe Kearns Goodwin for State Senate and Peter Koutoujian for Middlesex Co. Sheriff. The following year saw him lead the organizing efforts for the Boston mayoral campaign of Mike Ross, as well as Suzanne Lee’s campaign for Boston City Council District 2. In 2014, he was both the Field Director for the reelection campaign of Congresswoman Niki Tsongas, and the Get-Out-The-Vote Director for the Massachusetts Democratic Party throughout the 3rd Congressional District. Most recently, he held a senior position on the Ayanna Pressley Congressional campaign, helping to elect the first woman of color to the Massachusetts Congressional delegation.
Armed with skills in both social science research techniques and community engagement practices, he is focused on urban planning research projects that promote sustainable, inclusive, and equitable community development. He specializes in techniques of policy and program evaluation, survey design, and both quantitative and qualitative urban planning analysis.
Email: jon@riveraconsult.com
Seher Chowdhury, Intern
She/Her
Seher is a recent graduate of the Master of Public Health program at the Boston University School of Public Health, specializing in Health Policy & Law and Epidemiology & Biostatistics. Born to Muslim immigrants from Bangladesh who are both healthcare providers, she grew a strong interest in healthcare and initially thought about pursuing a career in medicine. While attending UCLA, she was extensively involved in an undergraduate organization that sought to increase access to culturally responsive and free healthcare services to Asian and Pacific Islander communities across Los Angeles. It was here where she grew a love for public health, directly working in communities, and learned more about the larger institutional and cultural barriers to healthcare access.
Seher also has a passion for learning and speaking different languages. Besides English, she can speak in Spanish, Korean, and Bengali. Working in largely immigrant, non-English speaking communities, she saw the translation and communications barriers present in interactions with healthcare providers. As such, she sought to be proficient in numerous languages to not only decrease the gap but also have the ability to have genuine interactions with community members.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a minor in Asian Languages (Korean concentration) in 2018, she went off to Boston to pursue her graduate degree. In Boston, she was able to explore the intersection of health and politics and how law and policy can affect public health on a larger scale. She previously was a Research Assistant at Pioneer Institute, supporting Barbara Anthony in her research on healthcare price transparency in Massachusetts and nationally. She co-authored 3 policy briefs discussing healthcare price transparency laws across the United States, shoppable services spending in Massachusetts, and consumer attitudes and knowledge of price transparency in Massachusetts. Her primary areas of interest are Medicaid expansion; reproductive justice; BIPOC health access and equity; and the intersection of health, human rights, and bioethics. She completed her Masters capstone on examining the efficacy of the proposal for work requirements in the Mississippi Medicaid program.
Her specialties include quantitative research, health policy analysis, and community health programming. She aims to do work that uses research and data to drive people-centered solutions, laws, and policymaking. Above all, using her privilege and experiences, Seher seeks to center and serve communities who are the most marginalized and overlooked in all aspects of her work.
Sophie Dover, INTERN
She / They
Sophie Dover recently completed her Master’s in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with a focus on racial justice, health equity, and economic democracy. This built on her professional experience in social and urban policy and planning, building partnerships, project leadership, strategic planning, and helping communities advance their agendas. Most recently, she worked on the Strategy and External Relations team at Chrysalis, a community-based workforce development organization in Los Angeles serving individuals and communities experiencing housing insecurity, systemic racism and disproportionate engagement with the carceral system.
Before joining the Kennedy School, she served as a senior policy analyst at the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), fighting for affordable housing protections under the current federal administration. Having worked as a patient navigator at a community health clinic in Boston, workers’ rights advocate in Queens, and external affairs representative at a real estate firm in Brooklyn, she is excited to use her public policy training and cross-sector fluency to build bridges between impacted communities and policy solutions. She is passionate about wealth and power redistribution and is continually seeking professional avenues to engage with this work.