Rev. Dr. George C. L. Cummings, Regional Executive Director
Dr. Cummings has been the Regional Executive Director of Faith in Action East Bay since 2018, having supervised the merger of Oakland Community Organizations (OCO) with two other East Bay federations known as CISCO in Contra Costa County, and COR in southern Alameda County.
He is the founding pastor of the Imani Community Church and served for 20 years as the Pearl Rawlings Hamilton Professor of Systematic Theology, and Academic Dean, at the American Baptist Seminary of the West in Berkeley, California. His ministry has been characterized by his commitment to combining an academic vocation alongside pastoral ministerial praxis as the appropriate context of theological reflection and scholarship. Since the church’s inception, Pastor Cummings has sought to empower the church to pursue its vision beyond the walls of the church in order to engage in a prophetic witness in the public square.
Pastor Cummings has served on the Board of Directors of FIA East Bay (formerly known as OCO), the Board of Directors of the Faith in Action national network, and is Chairperson of the Board of Directors of the Faith in Action Fund, a 501(c)4 nonprofit that facilitates the civic engagement of the members of the PICO national network.
He also serves as a co-chair of the Ceasefire Steering Committee in Oakland, where, since 2012, a partnership of the faith community, law enforcement, service providers, and civic leaders has successfully collaborated to reduce homicides by gun violence by 47 percent. Pastor Cummings believes in the words of the medieval priest who said, “Preach often, and when necessary, use words.”
contact: gclc@fiaeastbay.org
Rabbi Allan Berkowitz, Chief Operating Officer
Rabbi Allan is the COO at FIA East Bay. He is responsible for the ‘business’ side of the organization’s operations, including overseeing HR, financial management and reporting, overseeing fund development systems, and assisting the executive director in the day today management of the organization.
Rabbi Allan has a Masters degree in Education from Columbia University Teachers College and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
After serving in the pulpit for a number of years, Allan decided to pursue executive management in the nonprofit sector. For 17 years he was the Executive Director of the Environmental Volunteers, an environmental education organization that teaches school children to love and respect nature.
In 2017 he felt the calling to focus his energy and talents to support social justice work and began serving as our COO. Rabbi Allan is married to Mindy, the executive director of a social service agency. They have four adult children and an adorable 3-year old grandson who sometimes Zoom bombs FIAEB meetings.
contact: allan@fiaeastbay.org
Emma Paulino, Director of Leadership Formation
Born and raised in Michoacan and Jalisco, Mexico, Emma began organizing as a youth at her church, Santa Elena de la Cruz. In the 1980s she immigrated to Oakland, and launched her organizing career with OCO after fighting for her three children as they struggled in public schools.
Throughout her more than 25 years of organizing, she has worked alongside community members to win local policies and changes on issues concerning education, immigration, illegal dumping, and civic engagement. She is currently the Director of Organizing & Leadership Formation, where she enjoys continuing to do her part in helping ordinary people to discover and exercise their power. For Emma, putting her faith into action by empowering the less privileged is the center of her work.
contact: emmap@fiaeastbay.org
Rev. Rob Newells-Newton, Director of Clergy Organizing
Rev. Rob was raised in Oakland and studied Communication Arts and Sciences as an undergraduate at the University of Southern California. He was a 2015 fellow in the Black Theology and Leadership Institute at Princeton Theological Seminary where he also earned a Certificate in Theology and Ministry. He began his ministry at Imani Community Church in 2012 and was ordained in 2019.
After developing an HIV outreach and education program prioritizing young Black men in Raleigh and Durham for the AIDS Service Agency of North Carolina in 1999, Rob served in both the Technical Assistance and Training Department and the Communications Department at NMAC. He was a 2011 Fellow of BAI’s African American HIV University Community Mobilization College, has been a biomedical HIV prevention research advocate with AVAC since 2012, served as Co-Chair for the AIDS 2020 Local Planning Group, as Community Advisory Board Co-Chair for the amfAR Institute for HIV Cure Research, and served for five years as the Executive Director for AIDS Project of the East Bay, a community-based organization founded in Oakland, CA, in 1983.
Rev. Rob is a contributing author to the book Struggling in Good Faith: LGBTQI Inclusion from 13 American Religious Perspectives for which he penned the chapter on “The Black Church.” Rev. Rob lives in Discovery Bay with his husband, Brandon, and their German Shorthaired Pointer, Nubia.
contact: rob@fiaeastbay.org
Chris Logan, Director of Organizing
Chris Logan grew up in Detroit and moved to the Bay Area in 2020 where he served as an organizer for PACT and Sacred Heart Community Service in San Jose. He worked on public safety, alternatives to policing, and affordable housing projects.
Chris received a B.S. in Business Administration from Western Michigan University and an M.Div. from Saint Paul School of Theology in Leawood, Kansas. He wrote his thesis on how the church should desist from its oppression of LGBQTI+ people so that they are free to love God and love their neighbors.
“My faith inspires my work as a community organizer in every way! I believe organizers are prophets. The handbook for organizers is the book of Exodus. The way Moses did it: he organized Israel to move toward a better life. They got hungry and he fed them. It’s hard to do this work if you don’t have faith. It gives me a sense of groundedness. Otherwise you act from a place that’s desperate, emotional. It doesn’t mean you are not agitational, it means you come from faith and not fear.”
He is a part of the East Bay Church of Religious Science community. He also leads faith forums with university students with explorations of social justice, faith displacement, and the sacraments.
“So much of the work we do is sacramental: transforming people who are victims in situations and turning them into agents. That’s what the sacraments are supposed to do. The first revolution is internal. That is the sacramental part of our work.”
Contact: chrislogan@fiaeastbay.org
Valeria Ochoa, Community Organizer
Valeria (she/her/ella) is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and an immigrant herself. Her parents brought her at the age of one to the United States in search of a better life and future. Valeria grew up in Hayward, California, a neighborhood full of love, resilience, and systemic racism. With her neighborhood, Valeria experienced great loss and hardship due to oppressive policy systems. The difficult experiences that she went through gave her strength, courage, and taught her resiliency.
Valeria has since focused on giving back to her community through climate change activism and organizing. She worked for four years at Rising Sun, a renewable energy education center, where she fought against pollution disparities in low-income communities. As a clean energy organizer, Valeria worked in her hometown assessing energy and water efficiency within Hayward.
Valeria is one of the many Dreamers in the United States. She attended the University of California, Davis where she obtained a B.A. in Psychology and Sociology with an emphasis in Social Work. At Davis she was a research assistant in two research projects that focused on mass incarceration and police brutality. She plans to continue working within the social justice field and coalesce her passion within social justice policy and her narrative as an immigrant woman. Valeria carries her community with her in all the work that she does.
contact: valeria@fiaeastbay.org
Christopher Moreno, Community Organizer
Chris was born in Berkeley, CA, and raised in Oakland, CA. He is the son of Guatemalan parents who immigrated to the United States for a better life. Growing up in Oakland and being the son of immigrants has been a source of inspiration for him throughout his life. At a young age, through his experience, he began to notice the patterns of the unjust social and economic issues that negatively affect his community.
He believes in the power of change through unity amongst people despite religious, cultural, and ethnic barriers. For Christopher, religion was important when growing up. He was raised with Catholic beliefs. When he was 11, he served as a religious educator. Then, as youth minister at 18. During his time in his former parish community, an interest in serving the community sparked.
Christopher is a first-generation college graduate. He attended the Peralta Community College District and obtained an Associate’s degree in Social and Behavioral Sciences. Then transferred to the University of Califonia, Merced, and received a B.A. in Political Science and a minor in Psychology. Through his experience with higher education, he plans to use his knowledge to help serve and uplift his community despite any barriers.
contact: chris@fiaeastbay.org
Cedrick Emerson, Custom Notifications Coordinator
Cedrick is native of Oakland deeply connected to the community. He is the Ceasefire Custom Notifications Coordinator. His job is to recruit and coordinate clergy and community members to be a part of the Ceasefire custom notifications. He also attends all Ceasefire Partnership meetings, coordinates with the Parole Department and the DVP to connect directly with Ceasefire clients.
contact: cedrick@fiaeastbay.org
Barbara Lafitte-Oluwole, Program & Operations Manager
contact: lafitteolu@fiaeastbay.org
Alba Hernandez, Community Organizer
contact: alba@fiaeastbay.org
Sarita Giles, Administrative Organizer
Sarita is the Administrative Manager at FIAEB. In this role she collects data the organization relies on for its power-building strategies. In addition, Sarita provides administrative support to the Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer.
She had a long career in organizational administration at Kaiser, serving as a Workers Compensation Examiner.
Sarita is a longtime resident of Oakland who enjoys working out, traveling, and baking (the FIAEB staff always appreciates the baked treats she sometimes brings in).
contact: sarita@fiaeastbay.org
Theresa Henson, Communications Manager
Theresa Henson has served a variety of faith-based non-profits and is passionate about building and lifting up communities through creative work. She is an artist, spiritual director, and writer. She enjoys spending time with her dogs Bennie and Faith and cats Gracie and Leo. She frequently meanders the forest and swims in rivers. She studied English and Art Studio at University of California Santa Barbara. She has a Master of Arts in Transforming Spirituality from Seattle University and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
contact: theresa@fiaeastbay.org
Board of Directors
Rev. George Cummings, Executive Director
Rabbi Allan Berkowitz, COO
Pastor Todd Benson, Co-Chair
Linda Torres, Co-Chair
Pastor Billy Dixon, Co-Chair
Domingo Delgadillo, Treasurer
Deacon Tim Roberto, Assistant Treasurer
Florence Davis, Secretary
Leshbia Morones, Assistant Secretary
Ana Renderos
Silvia Guzman
Rev. Leslie Takahashi
Yadira Fregoso
Christine Ngounou
Nancy Taylor
Dr. Ida Oberman
Rev. Matt Prinz