This week, we're sitting down with Chris Melody Field Figueredo and talking about cultural shifts within organizations, with an eye towards inclusivity and equity. Chris also talks about direct democracy and how the work that the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BISC) does is reshaping democracy!
With over two decades of experience in advocacy and movement building, Chris Melody Fields Figueredo, a queer Venezuelan-American woman of color, serves as the Executive Director of BISC. Guided by a deep commitment to social justice, she leads BISC's vision, strategic direction, and fundraising efforts. Leveraging ballot measures as a tool for community change, she brings extensive expertise from progressive campaigns, focusing on key areas such as messaging, voting rights, campaign finance reform, and education access.
Below, check out 7 questions with insightful answers from Chris about their work.
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Tell us a bit about yourself!
It's a long story! We're just closed out Pride and Immigrant Heritage Month. So those are two core things about me. I was born in Venezuela, and I came to the US around three years old. So really, most of my experience is in the United States. I often describe myself as someone who's between worlds, with one foot in Venezuela, another foot in the United States, and balancing those worlds that have shaped me.
I'm a working-class kid. My parents, my dad's from the US, my mom's from Venezuela, and the choice they made to come to the US was for opportunity. My mom was a domestic worker, my dad was a maintenance manager for a printing company, and so that working-class background is just so fundamental to my upbringing.
I was the first, at least between the two of them, to go to college. I was going to school to be a teacher, and that's the path I thought was gonna be for me, but I started to get involved in student government. I was in college when September 11th happened, and so I really got involved in the anti-war movement and student government, and so that opened the world of politics for me.
I did my first political campaign in Iowa, doing the Iowa caucus in 2003, and that sort of started my political journey. I did US Senate races, did state house races. I came to DC not to work for a politician. I really wanted to go back to my roots of education and work for a non-profit that worked with DC public schools and charter schools. After that, I went back out and started getting really involved in politics again.
What I really came to learn about myself is that, for me, it was much more about the organizing and the community building. So after 2008, I left in the middle of the 2008 presidential campaign. I really witnessed how broken our democratic processes were. And that's sort of where I dedicated a good chunk of my career from then on to the advocacy side with national organizations, with the real focus in civil rights and justice. I spent a good amount of time doing that work, and then, like a lot of folks of color after the first election of Trump, I felt called to sort of put my hat in the ring to be an executive director.
This position at BISC, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, sort of came upon me. I saw an organization that was really trying to understand its role in a time of evolution of what it meant to really center racial justice and equity. They were using a different lens in politics and political work. And that's what I spent a good chunk of my career doing. So that was essentially my pitch!
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Talk to me about centering inclusivity and why that is so important in the work you do.
I mean, the closer to the painter, the closer to the solution! We all have great ideas. I've had many brilliant ideas throughout my career. But, you know, a question that we always ask ourselves—is this actually the right thing for the right time and the right people, right? It is so critical if we're thinking about any type of advocacy effort that you connect with the people the idea is for.
One of the best examples of that theory is from a rights restoration ballot measure we did in Florida. The most impacted community is formerly incarcerated, returning citizens. We thought, if we are truly going to make transformational change, if we are really going to upend the way democracy is looked at in this country, especially for those who were not part of the original vision, they have to be at the center.
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What has shifted in the culture of your organization under your leadership?
What I think shifted in the culture of the organization is, I mean, the BISC staff is reflective of a multiracial democracy. And that is not just about inclusion and representation, but it's how we think about the vendors we work with, or consultants that we work with, it's how we approach our research, it's really how we've shifted our entire training program to really ask and give choice points to the people that we train around race, power, and privilege. You know, we've grown in seven years. And I think one of the things that I was really adamant about, and it comes from my comms background, is that it has something to say. We felt it was really important not to be an organization in the background, but really part of a national narrative around what direct democracy means and what it means to build people power. And I think that's a big shift for the organization to really think about narrative and messaging and what role we play in shaping the future of our democracy.
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Are there any practices you had to leave behind, any practices you had to put in place to make that happen?
Yeah! We did an organization overhaul. We looked at every practice, every contract, our employee handbook, how we were hiring people, everything. Literally. We popped the hood, looked under, and really asked ourselves, you know, how do we think about equity? We created organizational values. We created a racial equity statement that was adopted by the staff. We have continued to have an internal working group around that, because that work is never complete. We have quarterly meetings as a full team.
So yeah, we just really looked at everything. Truly, every single practice that we had as an organization, and that meant training for staff, conversations with our coalition partners at the national and state level. We really, really took it seriously and continue to take it seriously—even more in the times that we are in.
One of the things that we're super proud of is the Declaration of Equity and Accountability, which is really a tool for campaigns and coalitions on how do you operationalize your values, how do you center equity in every phase of a ballot measure campaign, and that has come to be this manual handbook that really gives people practical tools on how to do this in their own work in ballot measures.
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We've seen this increased hostility toward direct democracy. Talk a little bit about how you're preparing for those legislative and legal fights that aim to limit the ballot initiative process and direct democracy itself.
We're doing a lot of research with and for our partners to have a better understanding of how people, not you and me, but folks in communities, feel about what is their understanding of these attacks and what they mean. We're also ensuring that they have the ability and the training to do lobbying efforts to build really strong coalitions that are diverse—who may not agree on several issues, but are these unlikely coalitions, allies that can work together because they may want to use the ballot initiative process in the future.
We're really keeping track of all that is happening through state legislatures, tracking those trends, sharing those trends with our state partners, and ensuring that they have legal counsel or are connected to lawyers who are going to be able to fight back on these.
We have been really working with our partners to make sure they have the training and tools. And if they need something else, we've worked with funders to make sure that they actually have the financial resources to make those things happen. These are states that aren't on a 270 map, so they don't often receive the same kind of resources. These are states like Missouri, Florida, Ohio, Utah, Idaho, and South Dakota—often states that are ignored. But folks are really fighting to ensure that the will of the people is heard, and it is so critical to help them make that happen.
And the last thing I'll say is, ensuring that journalists understand what is happening to the ballot measure process, whether it's implementation or the attacks on the process itself, is part of this authoritarian playbook and what is at stake with our democracy. We've done a huge, you know, a ton of work ensuring the media understands that this is part of the story that they have to understand and tell. So, you know, the public understands it, the more they can activate and fight back.
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So for leaders who are feeling stuck, maybe a little burned out right now, maybe even a little disillusioned, what's one mindset shift or cultural value you'd urge them to take seriously right now?
Behind me in my office is a ton of pictures of people who I would say are ancestors within the movement, the social justice movement—many folks whom I turn to for guidance, who faced incredibly, very difficult circumstances throughout their lives and careers, and always were very grounded in their North Star. They knew the world that they were talking about, building towards, was not something that they could see in their lifetimes, but every seed they were planting at that time would bear fruit in the future. As a mother, I really turn to that understanding, knowing that the seeds that I'm planting today will hopefully help my descendants.
Find what grounds us. Take deep breaths. Find community and people that you can feel connected to. I think so much of what's happening in the world today is that people feel disconnected and don't have community, and often feel very isolated. And find the ways that replenish you because it is a long journey.
So my call to action is making ballot measures love letters to our people. How do we do this work, especially ballot measures, in a way that is rooted in love, that makes people feel like they belong, that they can experience joy and celebration?
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What is your vision for the future of BISC? What does that look like?
What I think about for the future of BISC is that we have such a huge opportunity. We've grown so much already. We have the opportunity to lay a very forward vision for the next 25 years to build this world that we all deserve, right? Where we all feel safe, where we all feel cared for.
Ballot measures have an opportunity to deliver the fundamental needs that people are really searching for right now in their daily lives. And we have a great opportunity to scale up so many of the services that we already provide, like our training, like our research. We want to rise in this moment to make sure as many leaders across the country have those tools and resources available to them, so we can counter attacks.
To hear more from Chris, check out our podcast—click the button below to listen. Questions? Get in touch!