Melissa Cropper was elected President of the Ohio Federation of Teachers in February 2012 and is Secretary-Treasurer of the Ohio AFL-CIO. She hails from Georgetown in southwest Ohio, east of Cincinnati, where she served as a library media specialist in the Georgetown Exempted Village Schools for 14 years.
She brings a strong history of leadership to OFT having served as president of the Georgetown Federation of Teachers, as a member of the OFT Executive Committee, and as chair of the OFT Retirement Committee. She was also an active leader in the Ohio Appalachian Collaborative, a comprehensive approach for transformational change in rural education.
She is Secretary-Treasurer of We Are Ohio, a state coalition of community and labor groups formed to preserve workers’ rights, a member of the Board for UHCAN (United Healthcare Action Network), Progress Ohio and Policy Matters Ohio. At the national level, Cropper is an AFT Vice President, a member of the AFT Human Rights and Community Relations committee, and chair of AFT’s State Federation President’s Advisory Committee.
As President of the Ohio Federation of Teachers, Cropper continues to develop collaborative relationships with leaders and organizations across the state to fulfill the OFT mission of advocating for issues that affect not only OFT members but also the children, families and communities that our members serve.
Cropper believes that public employees are the fabric of our communities. OFT members, ranging from teachers to bus drivers to college professors to children services employees, and many others, make a difference in the lives of the children and families they serve every day. As president, her focus is on supporting and empowering OFT members by carrying out their vision and placing an important emphasis on increasing member voice.
Teleangé Thomas is a distinguished leader with over two decades of experience spanning healthcare, government, nonprofit, corporate, philanthropy, venture, and economic development. Her career is defined by strategic leadership, deep industry insight, and a commitment to advancing sustainable social and economic opportunities.
As Founder and Managing Partner of PLATTFORMS, Ms. Thomas drives socio-economic impact across diverse communities by advising small businesses, launching startups, and strengthening organizations. She is dedicated to leveraging entrepreneurship to foster equity and disrupt systemic barriers.
Ms. Thomas has co-founded several initiatives, including The Soul of Philanthropy Cleveland, The Cleveland Black Equity & Humanity Fund, Celebrate Those Who Give Black, FutureLAND, and IIE.VC—to bridge socioeconomic opportunities through public-private partnerships, philanthropy and entrepreneurship.
Most recently, she served as Chief Operating and Relationship Officer at JumpStart Inc., overseeing $150M in assets and supporting entrepreneurs with capital, connections, and resources.
Her accolades include Leadership Cleveland (2024), ECDI Women’s Business Centers of Ohio Woman of the Year (2023), Crain’s Business, Woman of Note (2022), Crain’s 40 Under 40, and Who’s Who in Black Cleveland. Ms. Thomas serves on the boards of Cleveland Port Authority and Policy Matters Ohio. She also passionately engages and supports several civic and charitable organizations.
Emily Brown is a Visiting Assistant Clinical Professor of Law and the Director of the Immigration Clinic at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. She supervises students representing immigrants in their applications for humanitarian relief, with a focus on immigrants in removal proceedings in the Cleveland Immigration Court.
Prior to joining Ohio State, Emily was a Skadden Fellow and then a senior attorney at Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE) in the Agricultural Worker and Immigrant Rights Practice Group. She represented individual clients and community organizations in immigration and civil-rights matters before federal courts and administrative agencies. She clerked for the Honorable R. Guy Cole, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit and the Honorable Algenon L. Marbley of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.
Emily earned her JD from Yale Law School, where she was a member of the Worker & Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic. Prior to law school, she worked for several years as a union organizer for the Service Employees International Union. Emily earned her BA in English Literature from Swarthmore College.
Robin J. Bachman brings more than 30 years of experience in strategic communications, external engagement, and public policy. Her career spans the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and senior leadership roles in a large faith-based health and human services nonprofit.
She most recently served at the U.S. Census Bureau where she led strategic communications and stakeholder engagement efforts and contributed to national equity and disability data initiatives. From 2014 to 2019, she was the Census Bureau’s Chief of the Policy Coordination Office and Chief Privacy Officer.
Earlier in her federal career, Robin served in the White House Office of Communications as an Associate Director of Research (1997–1999) and as Legislative Director for U.S. Representative Carolyn B. Maloney (NY-14).
From 2005 to 2014, Robin worked with the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, including as Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Policy for the Sisters of Charity Health System in Cleveland, Ohio, where she built coalitions and advanced health equity initiatives.
Robin holds a Bachelor of Arts from Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) and a Master of Public Administration from Virginia Tech (Blacksburg, Virginia). She also serves on the Board of Directors of Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry of Cleveland.
Robin has deep roots across Ohio. She was born at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Fairborn, Ohio, and is a graduate of Piqua High School in Piqua, Ohio. Robin now resides in the city of Cleveland, Ohio.
Brian Balogh is a Professor of History Emeritus in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia and Senior Fellow at the Levin College of Public Affairs and Education at Cleveland State University He is also a research fellow at Towards Employment. and LegalWorks in Cleveland. He founded Citizens for Efficient Courts and currently serves as its coordinator. Balogh was a cohost of the popular public radio show, then podcast, Backstory with the American History Guys which reached 80,000 listeners each week. He and Backstory’s other co-hosts appeared regularly on NPR’s Here and Now.
Balogh’s most recent book is Not in My Back Yard: How Citizen Activists Nationalized Local Politics in the Fight to Save Green Springs (Yale University Press, 2024). He is also the author of The Associational State: American Governance in the Twentieth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, Politics and Culture in Modern America Series, 2015), A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Chain Reaction: Expert Debate and Public Participation in American Commercial Nuclear Power (Cambridge University Press, 1991). He is co-editor with Bruce Schulman, of Recapturing the Oval Office: New Historical Approaches to the American Presidency (Cornell University Press, 2015).
Balogh received his B.A. from Harvard College and his Ph.D. in history from The Johns Hopkins University. Before entering graduate school, he served in Massachusetts and New York City government for eight years where he was a budget analyst, advisor to New York City Council President Carol Bellamy, and associate director of income maintenance programs for the New York City Department of Social Services. He currently lives in Cleveland Heights with his wife Kathleen Craig.
Carol Holmes-Chambers is a community solutions leader with extensive experience in coalition-building, workforce development, and systems change across Northeast Ohio. She serves as Community Solutions Director at Youngstown Area Goodwill Industries, where she leads cross-sector collaboratives focused on addressing structural barriers to community well-being and economic stability.
Carol spearheads regional initiatives such as the Assembly for Workforce Solutions and the RISE Community Collaborative, aligning employers, service providers, public systems, and community members around equity-centered, community-informed solutions. Her work is grounded in both systems-level strategy and on-the-ground practice, informed by professional experience in behavioral health, community wellness, and public education, which shapes her focus on policies that are responsive to real-world conditions and lived experience.
She holds a Master of Social Work from The Ohio State University and is completing her Doctorate in Social Work at Tulane University, with a focus on empowerment-based practice and participatory approaches to systems change. Carol also holds a Bachelor of Science in Education from Youngstown State University and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from The University of Akron.
Carol also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Greater Ohio Policy Center and is actively engaged in civic leadership through board service with the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley, Thrive Mahoning Valley, the Girard Free Library, and SMARTS Art School. Carol is also a proud member of Jack and Jill of America, Inc., Youngstown Chapter, where she supports leadership development, civic engagement, and community programming.
Sarah Lowry is a Mahoning Valley native and lifelong learner, nature-lover, and questioner.
Starting with learning: She earned a BA in English and Linguistics and a MA in American Studies with concentrations in Professional and Technical Writing and Teaching English as a Foreign Language from Youngstown State University. Between her undergraduate and graduate education, she completed a semester abroad in Taiwan, R.O.C., where she had the opportunity to work directly with top administrators at Lunghwa University of Science and Technology as a consultant on written and oral presentations to multiple professional audiences. In 2022, she completed coursework to become an Ohio Volunteer Certified Naturalist.
True learning always leads to questioning—Ms. Lowry has always had a curiosity for how and why things work (or don’t work). This has led her down a professional path towards understanding how systems are built, how they function, and how they can be improved.
After graduation, she worked for US Senator Sherrod Brown from 2012-2018 as the office’s Northeast Ohio representative serving constituents across a seven county district in the region. In this position, Ms. Lowry worked with community leaders at multiple levels to engage with Senator Brown’s policy priorities, to connect individuals with constituent services, and to identify solutions to complex challenges. In early 2018, she accepted a position as the Director of the Healthy Community Partnership at the Community Foundation of the Mahoning Valley. The mission and vision of the Healthy Community Partnership is to improve health, wellbeing, and health equity for residents in Mahoning and Trumbull Counties by improving environmental and social conditions that impact quality of life.
Leading a life guided by learning and questioning has also resulted in a desire to volunteer and be an active member in her local community. Ms. Lowry has been active at her church, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Youngstown and has served on the boards for community-focused organizations such as the YWCA of the Mahoning Valley, the League of Women Voters of Greater Youngstown, and most recently Friends of Fellows Riverside Gardens and Policy Matters Ohio.
Ms. Lowry tries to balance professional and volunteer activities with outdoor recreational activities: she regularly walks, hikes, bikes, and bird watches in Ohio’s First Park District, Mill Creek MetroParks in Youngstown. She also enjoys reading and writing and is a Community Columnist with Mahoning Matters, contributing a monthly column titled, “For the Health of It.”
Brian Pearson is the Executive Secretary of the North Shore AFL-CIO Federation of Labor. He previously served as the federation’s Political Director starting in 2021, where he led political strategy and initiatives focused on advancing workers’ rights.
Before joining the North Shore AFL-CIO, Brian spent eight years as a firefighter and paramedic with the City of Girard. He held leadership roles in IAFF Local 1220, including Secretary-Treasurer and President, and was actively involved in the Legislative Committee of the Ohio Association of Professional Fire Fighters (OAPFF), where he lobbied for pro-worker and pro-firefighter policies at the Statehouse.
Brian holds a bachelor’s degree in American History and a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Ohio University. He lives in Shaker Heights with his wife, Samantha, and their two children.
