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MEET THE BOARD
The BHIP Board is currently led by eight long-time community organizers, advocates, and cultural workers, the majority of whom identify as members of historically marginalized communities, and all of whom share professional and personal experience of displacement. While no member of our Board or staff can fit neatly into a box, we have done our best to offer insight into our members below.
We believe strongly that the lived experience, professional training, and personal contributions of the Board are essential to how we approach our responsibilities as co-directors/stewards of BHIP. We hope it is evident through our work - and with your support - that we take seriously how we set the tone and urgency to fulfill our commitment to BHIP's mission.
Cynthia Tobar
Cynthia is an Ecuadorian-American artist, activist-scholar, filmmaker and oral historian and long-time Bushwick resident who is passionate about creating interactive, participatory stories documenting social change. She is the founder of Cities for People, Not for Profit, an oral history project documenting gentrification and displacement in Bushwick. Cynthia is Associate Professor/Head of Archives at Bronx Community College, where she creates socially-engaged art programming and leads community-based archiving/storytelling projects and Visiting Associate Professor at Queens College where she teaches oral history.
Jenny Akchin
Jenny joined BHIP as a member and volunteer in 2013, and has served on the BHIP board since 2014. She is currently a tenants rights attorney at TakeRoot Justice, and previously worked or volunteered with a variety of housing advocacy and community organizing groups, including Picture the Homeless, the New York City Community Land Initiative, and the Metropolitan Council on Housing.
Michael Grinthal
Michael Grinthal has been a BHIP board member since 2021, and previously 2009 to 2013. Michael has been a tenant attorney in New York City since 2007, including as Director of Housing at TakeRoot Justice, supervising attorney at MFY Legal Services, and staff attorney at South Brooklyn Legal Services. Michael received a J.D. from Harvard Law School and a Master’s Degree in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government in 2006, and clerked for U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner in the District of Massachusetts. Before becoming a lawyer, Michael worked as a community organizer for six years with local leaders building power in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Texas.
Cathy Barreda
Cathy is the Director of the Tenant Rights Coalition at Brooklyn Legal Services, a team of advocates fighting alongside tenant organizers and leaders against the displacement of longtime communities of color. Prior to Brooklyn Legal Services, Catherine was a supervisor in the Tenant Rights Coalition at Queens Legal Services, a staff attorney at Take Root Justice, and a Poverty Justice Solutions Fellow with Legal Services-NYC. She is a Texas native, New York Law School graduate, and steering committee member with the NYC Right to Counsel Coalition.
Kery Espino
Kery has been a BHIP board member for over a decade, during which time he has developed deep experience in fundraising and advocacy. He is a lifelong Bushwick resident and parent of two students at EBC High School in Bushwick. He works for the New York City Police Pension Fund.
Raquel Namuche
Raquel is a long-time tenant organizer. Born in Peru and raised in Queens, she is the coordinator for the Ridgewood Tenants Union, an independent tenant-led housing group she started in 2014. During the day, she works as a tenant organizer at Mobilization For Justice.
Sadia Rahman
Sadia has 20 years of social justice advocacy experience as a movement lawyer at Catholic Migration Services, Urban Justice Center and TakeRoot Justice, where she represented hundreds of tenants against exploitative landlords, helped build coalitions and created just policies for all New Yorkers. Until July 2022, she was an interim Co-Executive Director at TakeRoot Justice, gaining experience in nonprofit management and leading a visionary organization through the pandemic.
Teresa Basilio Gaztambide
Teresa is a filmmaker and activist, a native of Puerto Rico, and a Brooklyn resident for over 20 years. She is the Network Strategies Director at MediaJustice, and the founder of Resilient Just Technologies, a community organizing and digital justice organization aimed at leveraging media, communications, political education, and decentralized technologies for immediate use by organizers on the frontline of racial, economic and climate justice movements to envision a world where all of our communities have access to a fair and just communications system. She is the former Deputy Director of the Resilient Communities Program at New America and Co-Executive Director of Global Action Project. Theresa is also a filmmaker, and co-produced the documentary Voces de Fillmore, focusing on the impact of gentrification and displacement on working class communities of Puerto Rican and immigrant families living in the Los Sures neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn.