Our Team

Kathy Asuncion (she/her)
Kathy Asuncion became involved in community organizing during the DREAM Act legislative fight of 2010 when she was an undocumented high school senior. Since then, she’s held fundraising roles such as grant writing, event coordinator, and major donor cultivator at the Stories Inspiring Movement and Grassroots International. Kathy’s role in the commons is to lead the training and capacity building program of the Resource Organizing Project offering, which supports grassroots fundraisers implement new fundraising tactics and move sustainable funds to their organizations. In her time off, Kathy enjoys cooking, biking, and spending time with loved ones.
Liza (she/her)
Liza grew up in Seacoast New Hampshire and has organized and fundraised in Boston for a decade. She learned to organize from Palestine liberation activists and takes inspiration from movements for wealth redistribution, housing justice, queer liberation, and the Jewish left.
Yani Burgos (she/they)
Yani’s path has been informed by a desire to see those around her thrive. After being introduced to community organizing as a teenager, Yani has committed her life to community-led social change. For the last 10 years, she has explored how might different communities work together to build power and shift from surviving to thriving, particularly among folks of color and LGBQTI+ communities. When not supporting the work of Movement Sustainability Commons, she enjoys finding innovative ways to use a slow cooker, chanting on the beach at sunrise, and searching for the latest and greatest in sneaker fashion trends.
Gabriella Gilbert (she/her)
Gabriella Gilbert has served Movement Sustainability Commons as the Finance Manager since 2021. With no prior finance experience, she was introduced to this work through one of the experiments of the Commons, aimed at training folks in the community to be bookkeepers for mission led organizations. Gabriella’s affinity for problem solving has made for an asset in leading systems building initiatives for the growing organization while also managing its finance and operations demands. While not processing check requests and onboarding new hires, she enjoys finding new and innovative ways of gathering folks especially in celebration.
Seth Kirshenbaum (he/him)
Seth Kirshenbaum is a Boston-based cultural trickster hiding out as a nonprofit executive. As the co-founder and co-director of Movement Sustainability Commons, Seth is co-creating pathways out of the “control” of the non-profit industrial complex by nourishing a sustainable ecosystem rooted in interdependence, abundance, joy and care. Prior to his work at the Commons, Seth spent eight years as Co-Director of Resist, a foundation that supports peoples’ movements for justice and liberation. Previous to that, he worked as a youth worker and youth organizer for eighteen years at The City School and Beantown Society in Boston and Quilombo NYC in New York City. Seth’s gifts include visioning the future by weaving connections in the present, financial sustainability conjuring, healing with white people and finding rockstar parking anywhere. Seth’s compass points toward feeling alive, seeing the world, listening to music and nourishing wholeness in self, community and all things.
Lihuan Lai (she/her)

Lihuan Lai, born in Southern China, is fortunate enough to become a Summer Search student and Posse scholar, supporting her to become a first generation high school and college graduate, and establish herself as a mission-driven leader. Lihuan’s career is grounded in creating a more equitable and just world through equal access to education, for adult immigrants, for racially and socio-economically diverse students, and international students. In the past 4 years, Lihuan has been putting her MS in Nonprofit Development into practice focusing on operations, finance and strategy in smaller nonprofit organizations in the Boston area. Prior, Lihuan traveled to 40 countries working in international admissions at Bentley University and Fordham University. Her work experience also includes chapters at the Asian University For Women in Chittagong Bangladesh, at the Asian American Civic Association, and as Director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Commonwealth School.

In her free time, Lihuan loves to practice yoga asana, bike, find social dancing spots (bachata, salsa, zouk), and aim to be a plant doctor to her vegetable garden and fruit trees.
Dave Jenkins (he/him)
I’m a voyaging Mainer from the North Woods committed to racial, economic and gender justice in New England and beyond. I got my organizing start in Boston’s youth justice movement where I supported youth-led campaigns against environmental racism and inequities in public education, transit, land-use, and food systems. After turning my 30th birthday cookout with Maine lobsters into an annual multi-organizational celebration and fundraiser, I got more and more excited about resourcing our movements in ways that build collaboration, community, sustainability and power. More recently, as a facilitator and coach supporting New England region organizing groups, I’ve witnessed a cross-section of the challenges that BIPOC, queer, and working-class-led organizations face in trying to fundraise for justice work. I co-founded ROP to help shift that paradigm.

Luana Morales (she/her/ella)
Luana Morales is the Community of Care Weaver and Co-director of the Movement Sustainability Commons (MSC). She holds and co-holds the work of Circle of Elders/Emerging Elders, Communications, Experiments, and Community Circle. She weaves the values of the Community of Care for the MSC ecosystem via the creation of the Interdependance Restival, Grief Ritual, and other ways of bringing community together for joy and healing and offering programming that holds our ecosystem in the fullness of their humanity. This is especially important in these times of deep suffering due to the impact of fascism, capitalism, and the attack on our immigrant, Queer, other vulnerable community kin. In addition to her role at MSC, she is an Afro-Boricua Birth, Death, and Ancestral healing and visual arts practitioner devoted to reclaiming and reimagining our birth, death, and healing practices. All her work is led by joy and pleasure, rooted in our ancestral earth based practices. She co-creates containers that support our individual and collective healing and liberation.
Now that her kids are adults she likes to do hoodrat things with her friends like liberate stems to propagate from plants in the wild.
Tatianna Montañez (she/her)
(also known as Jasmine)
Tatianna Montañez is the Co-Director of Finance and Human Resources at Movement Sustainability Commons. A proud Black & Puerto Rican mom/sister/auntie from Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood, Tatianna brings over 15 years of experience across HR, finance, operations, and DEI, grounded in a deep commitment to justice, dignity, and collective care. She spent seven years at Year Up in roles spanning human resources, finance, and corporate engagement, and was formerly the co-owner of a small, equity-focused consulting practice. Tatianna also serves as a facilitator for TSNE’s Emerging Consultants of Color Training (ECCT), where she supports BIPOC consultants in building values-driven practices.
She holds an MBA from Simmons University and is a SHRM Certified Professional (SHRM-CP). Tatianna joined MSC because she believes in liberation, collaboration, and the radical work of real people supporting one another to live their fullest, most human lives. She is drawn to being part of something bigger than herself—something rooted in community, care, and the reimagining of what’s possible.
Outside of spreadsheets and handbooks and facilitation, Tatianna is usually chasing sunlight, laughing with her kids, or learning how to rest without guilt (with mixed success). She also enjoys reading, thrifting, collecting quirky vintage electronics and odd treasures, and watching her kids blossom into dope, loving humans.

General Circle