Rosalyn Woodward Pelles is a veteran of the civil rights and workers’ rights movements. She has a long history of social justice activism that spans five decades, beginning with her work as a teenager in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).

Ms. Pelles is currently the Assistant Director for Student Engagement and Lecturer at the Center for Public Theology and Public Policy at the Yale University Divinity School.

Ms. Pelles previously served as the Vice President of Repairers of the Breach, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to build a progressive agenda and movement rooted in the moral values of justice, fairness, and the common good. She is also serving as the Strategic Advisor to the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival, a continuation and expansion of the work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

She is the former Executive Director of the North Carolina NAACP. While at the North Carolina NAACP, she also served as a strategist and advisor to North Carolina’s Moral Monday/Forward Together Movement, during the pivotal and historic year when Moral Mondays erupted in the state capitol of Raleigh, spread across the state, and inspired the nation.

Prior to this, Ms. Pelles was the Director of the Civil, Human and Women’s Rights Department at the national American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). She also served as the Executive Director of the Union Community Fund, a national labor charity created to provide funding for social and economic justice organizations. Ms. Pelles was also the Executive Director of the National Rainbow Coalition and Special Assistant to Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

Ms. Pelles served on the Board of Directors of the Highlander Research and Education Center, where she was the Board Chair, and on the national board of Interfaith Worker Justice.

Rosalyn Pelles was named one of the country’s outstanding African American women labor leaders by the Institute for Policy Studies in the And Still I Rise: Black Women Labor Leaders Initiative. She was also the 2019 recipient of the Forward Justice Ella Baker Award.

In 2013 Ms. Pelles was the recipient of the Social Justice Visiting Researcher Fellowship at the University of Southern California Program for Environmental and Regional Equity. She has also been a lecturer and workshop leader across the United States, Canada, Tanzania and Uganda.

Ms. Pelles received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Psychology from North Carolina Central University and a Juris Doctor Degree from Howard University School of Law.

Ms. Pelles is married and has three sons.

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