Gabrielle Chapman (she/they) is the Membership Director for the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives. Gabrielle is a proud Black Appalachian from West Virginia with a strong background in organizing rural, working-class people and cares deeply about prison abolition, labor and environmental movement struggle, building worker power and transforming narratives about race in Appalachia. She uses the knowledge she has acquired across the fields of racial and economic justice; food and land advocacy; and solidarity economics to ground and inform her equity analysis to teach others about how systemic racism, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, environmental justice and economic disenfranchisement impact organizational growth and wellbeing.
Formerly, Chapman was the inaugural director of Call to Action for Racial Equality Coalition, West Virginia’s first intersectional racial equity organization. Additionally, she was selected as a 2018 Justice Fellow with the Open Society Foundation and was awarded a ‘West Virginia’s Community Organizer of the Year Award’ which coincided with the #55strong movement led by Teachers across the State of West Virginia. From 2018-2020, she served as a Board of Director for the West Virginia Women’s Health Center and currently serves on the Board of Directors for The West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. Chapman holds a BS in Applied Biology from Russell Sage College. During her college years, she received a scholarship to visit 14 countries and 3 continents where she was able to engage and learn about systems of oppression from an international perspective. Gabrielle’s happy place is snuggling with her dogs and nerding out on the latest policy trends across science, economics, and tech.