Empowering shareholders to hold corporations accountable

Whitney Shepard is Co-Executive Director of Majority Action. She believes that systems change through our interactions with them. Because of this, she values campaigns that illuminate new pathways of systemic engagement and creates opportunities for people to realize their full potential and ability to impact the world positively. Whitney’s background as a campaign strategist, community organizer and movement researcher informs her approach to social & systemic change. She has worked at the local and national levels on campaigns addressing food insecurity, mass incarceration, immigration reform, workers’ rights, and Wall Street accountability. In her work, Whitney advocates for the explicit connection to be made between economic and racial justice and explores how economic structures are used to institute racial bias, harm, and inequity.

In addition to her role at Majority Action, Whitney is a national member of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). She believes it is important to learn from our past to better inform our future.

Over the past three years, Bryant has played a pivotal role in the growth of the research department at Majority Action. His responsibilities include anchoring the research and strategic decision-making that drives Majority Action's climate campaign priorities and asset manager accountability work. He has been the lead author of Majority Action's seminal report, Climate in the Boardroom, as well as, MA’s Proxy Season Vote Guides, and exempt solicitations that underpin the organization's campaign and investor engagement efforts. Beyond his research expertise, Bryant has also guided Majority Action's climate campaigns and racial justice work. In this capacity, he led research and supported the effort to socialize the understanding that companies engaged in fossil fuel production, consumption, and financing have a long track record of business practices that disproportionately harm people of color in the U.S. and abroad. Most recently, he led one of Majority Action's signature "Vote No" campaign efforts against a Bank of America committee chair during the 2024 proxy season. This campaign resulted in a material drop in support for the company's director responsible for climate oversight and the collective "ratcheting" effect necessary to lock in progress on decarbonization at the company.
Similarly, during the 2024 proxy season, Bryant led accountability efforts that targeted one of the largest U.S.-based asset managers, Nuveen, for its poor proxy voting record. As a result, Congressmember Robin L. Kelly's office is engaging with the firm's new CEO to understand better how the firm supports or undermines its efforts to ensure long-term value creation in the face of escalating systemic risks. Bryant is a graduate of Christopher Newport University and earned a Masters of Arts from American University School of International Service.

Sarah Weintraub is the Chief Operating Officer at Majority Action, located in Southern Vermont. She brings over 12 years of experience in organizational and programmatic leadership, with a focus on equity practices and organizational development.

Prior to joining Majority Action, Sarah served as the Director of Learning, Development, and Culture at Ekō (formerly SumOfUs), a global mass mobilization organization fighting corporate power. Earlier in her career, she held leadership roles at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and Fellowship of Reconciliation's Colombia Peace Presence.

Cerece Rennie Murphy is the Director of Development at Majority Action. Cerece brings over 20 years of development and project management experience to her role of supporting racial justice and climate action programs within the organization.

Cerece's previous work focused on community and international development, climate change, and nuclear weapons abolition at Physicians for Social Responsibility, Global Communities, and the Development Corporation of Columbia Heights.

Radhika Vazirani is the Director of Program Management & Operations at Majority Action, located in Long Beach, CA. She brings experience as a Project Management Consultant, managing operations for a variety of businesses. She is passionate about building organizational systems that streamline processes and increase efficiency. She is dedicated to helping our organization succeed as we scale.

Prior to consulting, she started her own e-commerce business called Jiva More Life, worked at GE Healthcare managing multi-million dollar sales, and has a background in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Laura De Palma comes to Majority Action with a background in organizing. She has organized at the intersection of gender, racial, and economic justice and has campaigned for Universal Family Care, Universal Long-Term Care, and Paid Family Leave. She led the Michigan Caring Majority campaign and coalition to win the Long-Term Care Study Bill in 2018, which was a project of Caring Across Generations. She was the Director of Stakeholder Engagement for the Michigan Long-Term Services and Supports Feasibility Study with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Altarum, Milliman, and Michigan United. In that role, she designed and managed the implementation of a participatory and inclusive stakeholder engagement program for organizational and coalition partners and people mostly directly impacted within the care landscape across the state of Michigan. She has been trained at Rockwood Leadership Institute and Midwest Academy.

Divya Sundar (she/her) is the Director of Research at Majority Action. She comes to Majority Action from the plaintiff-side law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, where she conducted investigative, economic, and financial analysis for several groundbreaking antitrust, securities, and mass torts class action cases. Previously, Divya was the Lead Strategic Researcher at East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), where she used strategic corporate research to support campaigns for worker protections during the COVID-19 emergency, local labor standards enforcement, hotel worker rights, and equitable development on public lands. She also served as Research and Policy Analyst for the United Auto Workers' campaign at the flagship Tesla factory, where her responsibilities included strategic corporate research, lobbying, and political organizing.

Divya has a B.A. in History from the University of Chicago and an M.A. in Comparative Cultural Studies and Graduate Minor in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Ohio State University. She is currently completing her M.S. in Economics at Purdue University.

Jason Opeña Disterhoft is a Director of Strategic Initiatives, working with investors to strengthen their proxy voting practices and policies to mitigate systemic risk from climate change and racial inequity. Jason comes to Majority Action from Rainforest Action Network, where he led engagement with the biggest U.S. banks on their fossil fuel lending and underwriting. Prior to that, he worked on business and human rights at Amnesty International USA. Jason holds a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a master's degree (in philosophy) from Tufts University.