Los Angeles- AF3IRM is proud to announce its newly elected 2023-2025 National Executive Council (NEC).
These are the women who have been chosen to lead AF3IRM in our resistance against femicide, global fascism, and imperialism.
National Chairperson – Connie Huynh is a mother, survivor, daughter of refugees, researcher, and organizer, and has been a member of AF3IRM for almost 10 years. As a Los Angeles chapter member, she has helped lead and grow the chapter’s organizing, including Los Angeles’s annual International Women’s Day mobilizations and events, and campaigns such as #SurvivorsNotCriminals (SNC) to end the criminalization of trafficking survivors in Los Angeles County massage establishments. Huynh will be continuing on to her second term as National Chairperson.
National Programme Coordinator – Sylvia Cabrera is a Chicana from Whittier, California, and a seasoned transnational feminist organizer in AF3IRM. Prior to her current role, she was the 2020-2023 National Organizing Director, a Collective NEC member, and a co-coordinator of the Los Angeles chapter. As Organizing Director and co-coordinator, she has helped AF3IRM expand existing chapters and start several new organizing committees and chapters across Turtle Island. Cabrera co-led the Los Angeles chapter to its 2020 SNC campaign victory and continues to co-lead in the chapter’s campaign work. She is also a full-time middle school special education teacher, an active union member of United Teachers Los Angeles, a caretaker for her grandmother, and a master’s student at CSULA in the Mild/Moderate Special Education program.
National Communications Director – Rochelle Sugawa is a Hawai‘i-born attorney and spiritual practitioner and educator. Since joining AF3IRM in 2016, Sugawa has been a core member of the Hawai‘i and Los Angeles chapters, served as a co-lead of the Los Angeles SNC campaign, and has co-facilitated trainings for the AF3IRM Basic Women’s Orientation, the National Summer School of Youth Activism, and the Los Angeles School of Women’s Activism. Her professional experience includes helping im/migrants, refugees, and survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence access social services and attain immigration status. She looks forward to applying her digital communications experience to expand AF3IRM’s membership and audience.
National Organizing Director – Roslyn Cassidy’s passion for organizing is fueled by her lived experience as a survivor and by her love for her communities. She currently works as a family advocate for single mothers and families to help connect them to childcare and other community resources. Cassidy was crucial in building the AF3IRM San Diego Organizing Committee into a full-fledged chapter within six months. In San Diego, she also served as coordinator and a co-lead of the SNC campaign. She looks forward to continuing to strengthen our membership, developing youth leaders, and organizing more survivors of exploitation, because “organizing is an act of true self love, essential to our communities and survival.”
National Education Director – Mykie Ozoa-Aglugub is a founding member and former co-coordinator of the AF3IRM Hawai‘i chapter and an expert in anti-gender violence advocacy and training with 10 years of experience working in Title IX and survivor advocacy, and 14+ years of organizing, curriculum building, training development and delivery, and project planning. During her time in AF3IRM, she has been integral to the Hawai‘i chapter’s organizing and theory building in Hawai‘i, particularly at the intersections of Native and Indigenous women and girls, colonization, and the sex trade.
National Finance and Fundraising Director – Skylar Perez-Grogan joined the AF3IRM Los Angeles chapter in 2016. Since then, she has served as a chapter co-coordinator, youth coordinator, and as the current co-lead in the chapter’s SNC campaign. In her paid work, she is a clinical social worker with the forensic population in Los Angeles. Perez-Grogan has also worked with unhoused LGBTQ youth and survivors of gender-based violence. She is a survivor, a sister, and the proud daughter of a Chicana single mother.
The election of the National Executive Council took place in early October during AF3IRM’s Congress weekend, which also marked our organization’s 12th anniversary. AF3IRM was launched on October 2, 2010. This year we are also celebrating 33 years of history since the launch of Gabriela Network, our predecessor organization, on September 4, 1989.
It has been a long road and we are continuing on to complete the revolution! Until the downfall of patriarchy!