Lawrence Joe
Project Director
Lawrence Joe joined the California Participation Project in May 2012 after working with the Los Angeles City Council Redistricting Commission as part of their Outreach staff. A recent graduate of UCLA School of Law and the Luskin School of Public Affairs’ Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Lawrence has been involved with a number of nonprofit, legal aid, and governmental organizations over the past 10 years, having worked or volunteered in low-income communities in Boston, Oakland, and Los Angeles Chinatown.
Lawrence’s experiences with voter engagement work include volunteering on a number of political campaigns, registering and educating immigrant voters in Boston’s Chinatown, and volunteering with the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, DC, on poll monitoring and election protection work. Lawrence was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley (just 10 miles east of Los Angeles) and considers Southern California home.
Contact: (213) 346-3291 | Email: lawrence [at] caparticipates.org
Sarah Pillsbury
Project Partner
Sarah Pillsbury is the Project Partner at the California Participation Project. A long time activist, philanthropist and filmmaker, Sarah first got involved with civic participation in the fall of 2004 raising funds for a coalition of nonprofits, National Voice. In January 2005 she helped launch the Nonprofit Voter Engagement Project – Nonprofit VOTE – which is recognized as leading source of nonpartisan resources to help nonprofits integrate voter engagement into their ongoing activities and services. In 2009, she approached Community Partners, which agreed to become the home to a Los Angeles-based initiative of Nonprofit VOTE, the California Participation Project.
Sarah moved to Los Angeles from Minnesota in 1974 to become a filmmaker and, in partnership with Midge Sanford, produced a dozen films including DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, RIVER’S EDGE, EIGHT MEN OUT, HOW TO MAKE AN AMERICAN QUILT and the Emmy Award-winning HBO film AND THE BAND PLAYED ON.
Throughout her film career, Sarah has continued to be involved with community organizations and local politics. In 1976 she co-founded the Liberty Hill Foundation, which has provided funding and training to community-based organizations and helped build strategic alliances that have created lasting change – reforming policies, introducing new standards and safeguards, and advancing equality and opportunity in Los Angeles. She continues to serve as an Emeritus member of the Board of the Liberty Hill Foundation and has recently joined the Board of the California Association of Nonprofits (CalNonprofits).
Contact : (213) 346-3291 | Email: sarah [at] caparticipates.org