Sara Mersha

Sara Mersha, the Director of Grantmaking and Advocacy, brings years of experience connecting local community organizing with broader movement building work to Grassroots International. Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Sara has spent the majority of her life in the United States. Sara worked for 12 years as Lead Organizer and then Executive Director of Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), a grassroots group with a membership base in low-income communities of color in Providence, Rhode Island. She served as Visiting Faculty in the Ethnic Studies Department of Brown University, and entered a graduate program at Brown’s Center for Environmental Studies in 2009.  Since then, she has focused her academic and movement-building work on climate justice and food sovereignty, including with the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.