Staff & Board
Get to know our team
Betsy Plum, Executive Director
Betsy has spent her career in the social justice field. Before joining Riders Alliance, she served as the Vice President of Policy for the New York Immigration Coalition. While at the NYIC, Betsy led multiple winning policy campaigns, oversaw robust rapid response efforts and organizational growth, and helped set the vision for what a more inclusive New York must look like. She joined Riders Alliance in 2020 bringing her commitment to build a stronger, more thriving New York and a belief that we arrive at this place by investing in our public systems and holding those in power accountable. In addition to her role at Riders Alliance, Betsy serves on the Board of Directors of Central American Legal Assistance and is a Sterling Fellow, a network of systems leaders working to increase economic mobility across New York City, with racial equity as a central guiding value. She is a graduate of Bard College and the London School of Economics.
Mayra Aldás-Deckert, Lead Organizer
Mayra mobilizes our grassroots base of transit riders and leads the organization’s campaigns. Mayra has been a strong advocate for immigrant communities for years. Before joining Riders Alliance, she was the Director of Community Engagement at the New York Immigration Coalition where she managed a number of initiatives, implemented outreach strategies to engage New York City’s diverse communities, and served as the main coordinator of the NYIC’s Key to the City Initiative. Mayra is a graduate of Brooklyn College with a B.S. in Business Management and Finance. In Ambato, she completed three years of Commercial Engineering with a focus in Management and Business Planning at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador. A native of Ecuador, Mayra moved to New York City with her family in 2005. She currently resides in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
Salma Allam, Community Organizer
Salma joined Riders Alliance as the first Grassroots Organizing Fellow through the Johnson Justice Fellowship Program. Before joining Riders Alliance, Salma worked at the Arab American Association of New York for three years. Growing up in Egypt, Salma became politicized after the 2011 Arab Spring which showed her what the power of the people manifested can accomplish. Salma is passionate about movements for liberation and building a world that addresses the needs of the many, rather than the few. She graduated from DePauw University in 2020 with a double major in English Literature and Middle Eastern Studies. A lifelong learner, Salma is always searching for political education spaces rooted in praxis. She is excited to fight for better public transit, an area so important to working class communities.
Danna Dennis, Senior Organizer
Danna has been building communities and fighting for positive social change for years. As a college student at SUNY Herkimer, she represented her freshman class in student government and coordinated public relations for the Black Student Union. Danna is a longtime volunteer in the Seventh Day Adventist Church where she has served as a youth leader and planned mission trips and conferences, convening more than eleven hundred people. Before joining the staff of Riders Alliance, Danna worked in the health care field and was a volunteer leader at Riders Alliance fighting for better C train services and affordable MetroCards for low-income New Yorkers on the Fair Fares campaign.
Molly Galvin, Director of Fundraising and Organizational Development
Molly spent the last twenty years helping passionate donors and visionary nonprofit leaders advance national and international advocacy and policy solutions. She grew up in rural Ohio and has worked to build community and a more just and livable planet as an AmeriCorps volunteer, community organizer, and fundraising specialist. She came to Riders Alliance from the National Parks Conservation Association where she was the Regional Director of Development, Northeast. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Social and Global Studies from Antioch College.
Derrick Holmes, Digital Strategist
Derrick, a former HVAC technician by trade, has always seen access to reliable public transit as one of the most important characteristics of equitable, resilient cities. As a Miami native, his work in advocacy began by doing outreach as a part of Transit Alliance Miami, a nonprofit that led a two-year redesign of Miami-Dade County's entire bus network. In his role at Riders Alliance, he aims to help improve access to mobility and opportunity for millions of New Yorkers and ensure that New York continues to set the most progressive example for transit agencies around the country and the world.
Hannah Land, Fundraising Associate
Hannah grew up in Roanoke, Virginia and graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is passionate about building community in all that she does. Hannah served as a Teach for America corps member in Connecticut, where she taught first and second grade. Most recently, she worked in digital fundraising at a public media station in Virginia. Hannah, her wife, and their two cats recently moved to New York from Richmond, Virginia. She is excited to join the fight for a more equitable public transit system that works for all New Yorkers.
Caitlin Pearce, Deputy Director
Caitlin oversees campaigns and organizing for Riders Alliance. She brings more than a decade of experience in labor advocacy and a passion for making New York City a better place to work and live. Caitlin previously served as Executive Director of Freelancers Union, where she fought to expand protections for independent workers, led a grassroots coalition to pass landmark wage theft legislation, and built a national model for worker-led organizing, growing the union’s membership to half a million freelancers. Caitlin holds a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University and a bachelor’s degree from Bard College.
Danny Pearlstein, Policy and Communications Director
Danny started advocating for better transit in high school and developed his passion for politics and organizing while working in neighborhood groups and city government. He came to Riders Alliance from New York City Council where he was chief of staff to Committee on Land Use Chair David Greenfield and counsel to Courts & Legal Services Chair Rory Lancman. Previously, he represented injured workers and low-income tenants in court. He has degrees in environmental studies and urban planning from Cornell and law from Cardozo.
Jolyse Race, Senior Organizer
Jolyse has been a community and labor organizer for over seven years. She began organizing while earning her BA in Anthropology at Michigan State University. During undergrad she worked to organize an undergraduate student union and ran campaigns to decrease tuition and improve policies responding to sexual assault on campus. She spent years fundraising for organizations and projects that directly support those with intersectional identities in her community. Jolyse also spent two years organizing for Michigan State University’s Graduate Employees Union where she played a crucial role in raising membership and finishing a successful contract campaign. She is excited to continue her commitment to social justice by fighting for better public transportation in New York City.
Kristin Wright, Senior Human Resources and Operations Manager
Kristin brings to Riders Alliance her passion for advocacy and political action, developed through over fifteen years of civic community engagement. She grew up in California and studied Political Science at the University of British Columbia. Central to Kristin’s role at Riders Alliance is her belief that progressive change begins with a dedication to equity and social justice. She strives to provide a foundation of investment in personnel’s growth and development in all aspects of Riders Alliance’s work. She is driven by a commitment to supporting, empowering, and facilitating the work of her fellow staff members.
Interested in joining our team? Take a look at our open positions here.
Our board
Tolani Arike Adeboye
Tolani is Senior Director of the Office of Data Management at the New York City Department of Education, where she leads state and Federal reporting initiatives, academic data infrastructure and governance efforts, and strategic data management. Tolani is a lifelong public transit user and is particularly concerned about access for under-served communities and low-income riders. She joined the Riders Alliance as a member-activist in 2012 and is a proud resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Murad Awawdeh
Murad is a strategist, organizer, and advocacy expert currently serving as the President and CEO at the New York Immigration Coalition (NYIC). The son of Palestinian immigrants, Murad has dedicated over two decades of his life fighting for low-income communities of color across the State of New York. He grew up organizing to stop dangerous and hazardous developments in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and engaging community residents to build power and bring transformational change to their neighborhoods. As the NYIC's Executive Vice President of Advocacy & Strategy he mobilized hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers at demonstrations against anti-immigrant policies. As the Executive Vice President of NYIC Action, the NYIC’s sister 501(c)4 political advocacy and action organization, he has successfully led grassroots electoral campaigns to elect progressive candidates. Murad was honored with a U.S Congressional Recognition, and Public Service Awards from the NYS Senate and Assembly. He serves as a Trustee of the New York University Family Health Centers Board, as a member of the Justice 2020 Committee, and as Commissioner of the New York City Civic Engagement Commission.
Elizabeth Perez
A Riders Alliance member since 2017, Elizabeth joined the board in 2021. Elizabeth Perez currently works as the General Counsel at CASES (Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services). In her prior role as Compliance Officer and Counsel at East Harlem Council for Human Service she was responsible for ensuring compliance with laws and regulations applicable, and before that as Legal Director at Lawyers Alliance for New York, Elizabeth oversaw the provision of pro bono legal services to nonprofits across New York City. In her 13 years of service as a public interest attorney, Elizabeth has aimed to support organizations addressing equity and quality of life for all New Yorkers, and she is especially passionate about access to quality health care. She is a graduate of Columbia University School of Law, the University of London, and Texas A&M University.