Arizona Advocacy Network

Eric Ehst is a founding member of Arizona Advocacy Network and AZAN Foundation.  He has a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland and spent over twenty years directing the design, development and marketing of jet engines for numerous domestic and international customers. He recently completed his term as the first male state policy coordinator (president) in the history of Arizona National Organization for Women and served as Executive Director for the Clean Elections Institute.  Eric is active in the Valley Citizen’s League which has a long standing commitment to community affairs and the O’Connor House project for civic discourse. He has served on various committees for the League of Women Voters, The American Association of University Women and the Arizona Conservation Alliance. Eric has run for public office and routinely helps candidates understand current requirements to qualify as a Clean Elections candidate. He is actively engaged in our efforts to protect and strengthen the voter approved Citizen’s Clean Elections Act and other anti-corruption laws.

Beth Meyer has been an active member of the progressive movement since she was 10 years old at the “insistence” of her parents.  As a teenager she advocated for reproductive rights and spent her entire senior high school year pushing to stop hunger in Africa and working at her mother’s side in support of the civil rights movement.  In early 2006 she was named the Arizona State Director of the Center for Progressive Leadership (CPL).

Prior to joining CPL, Beth served as the Vice President of External Affairs for Planned Parenthood of Central and Northern Arizona.  Her responsibilities in this position, which she held for more than five years, included overseeing the Public Policy, Education, Community Outreach, Fund Development and Communication Departments.  She was also responsible for the c-4, concentrating on electoral races throughout Arizona.

Carmen Cornejo was born in Mexico, lived in the city of Monterrey and graduated with honors from ITESM with a bachelor degree in Communications.
She worked as editor of publications for ITESM and as a professor in the same university teaching Theory of Mass Communications. In 1989 she started her own clothing design business. She immigrated to the USA 1991and enrolled at the South Mountain and Mesa Community Colleges to pursue her interest in ceramics and three dimensional art. She worked as instructor for Spanish lessons with children 3 to 5 years old with the Chandler Parks and Recreation Department for 7 years. Carmen Cornejo has done volunteer work for St. Mary-Basha Catholic School, Chandler Public Library, Carl Hayden Falcon Robotics, among others. She has been member of the board of the Chandler Education Foundation, Friends of the Chandler Public Library, Si Se Puede Foundation and is founding member of APASE (Arizona Providers of Applied Science and Engineering) organization that provides underwater robotics competitions to students of all levels, and focuses on underserved populations. Currently, Carmen is Secretary of the Board of Chicanos por la Causa, (CPLC) and the executive director of CADENA, an organization that educates the community about the need to pass the DREAM Act in the USA Congress.

Carmen Cornejo collaborates with the Chandler Republic opinion pages and blogs about immigration issues.  Her advocacy has taken her to participate on TV shows like Horizonte on Ch 8 KAET / PBS, radio, and diverse newspapers as a spokesperson for immigration, youth and education issues. She has been invited to participate on academic panels at ASU, Phoenix College, ASU West and research institutes as an expert on immigration, education and youth.  She organized in 2011, along with Reyna Montoya, a group of students, Youth for Education in Action, YEA!, a civic engagement initiative. YEA! participated in the historical election in Mesa, AZ, Legislative District 18 that defeated State Senator Russell Pearce and elected Jerry Lewis. YEA!’s objective is to register high school and college students; work on voter education and voter mobilization and engage youth in the Democratic process. YEA’s first effort registered 353 new voters and knocked on nearly 3,000 doors to motivate voters to the polls and established phone banking operations.

Currently Carmen is the president and CEO of Critical Mass Communications, LLC, a bi-cultural marketing and public relations firm. She looks forward to a new venture: Rovorevo, Robot Revolution, which markets robots and robot kits for educational purposes.

A young leader in the community, David brings a diverse professional and legal background to AzAN.  From 2008 through 2009, David represented Arizona's 11th Legislative District in the Arizona House of Representatives.  While in the Arizona House of Representatives, David served on the Commerce, Government and Human Resources Committees.  David is also a graduate of Valley Leadership Class 32.  

David is currently an attorney at Quarles & Brady LLP in Phoenix, Arizona, and handles complex commercial litigation matters with an emphasis in real property disputes.  David frequently handles pro bono matters for indigent clients, and also serves as a volunteer lawyer for the State Bar of Arizona Young Lawyer’s Division Wills for Heroes Program.

David is also heavily involved in the Maricopa County Bar Association, one of the largest, voluntary metropolitan bar associations in the country.  David currently serves as Treasurer, will serve as President-Elect in 2012 and will ascend to the position of President in 2013 - one of the youngest Presidents in the nearly 100-year history of the Maricopa County Bar Association.

President Arizona Hispanic Community Forum, an advocacy organization comprised of many of Arizona's most effective advocates for Latino civil rights; Treasurer of Somos America/We Are America.

Brigadier General John Adams retired from the US Army in September 2007.   As President of Guardian Six Consulting LLC, he assists clients in successfully addressing US and allied military requirements. He is also a PhD Candidate at the School of Government and Public Policy at the University of Arizona.  His final military assignment was as Deputy United States Military Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium, the highest military authority of NATO.  
 
As a Foreign Area Officer, Military Intelligence Officer, and Army Aviator, his more than thirty years of service in command and staff assignments includes nearly eighteen years in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, including assignments with US Embassies in Belgium (1994-1997), Rwanda (1996), Croatia (1998-2001), and South Korea (2002-2003).  On September 11, 2001, he was stationed at the Pentagon as Deputy Director for European Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and participated in immediate disaster recovery operations at the crash site as well as coordinated international support for the US diplomatic and military response.
 
John first made acquaintance with Arizona while stationed at Fort Huachuca in 1977. He and his wife, Laura Magan MD, make their home in Tucson. They enjoy sailing, hiking, and cooking.

Manuel Cruz is a fourth generation Arizona native.  He, his wife, and four of their five children reside in Glendale, Arizona.  His eldest daughter completed her term of duty in the United States Navy in 2011, serving as a Navigator on the U.S.S. Donald Cook.  In 2010, Manuel qualified and ran as a Clean Elections candidate for the statewide office of Arizona State Mine Inspector. He has over fifteen years experience as an Explosives Engineer, Safety Director, and Miner, working in mines across the country.  Manuel is the Executive Director of the Abandoned Mine Safety Organization, a 501(c)(3) non-profit entity dedicated to closing abandoned mines and providing abandoned mine safety education.  An active community leader, he also sits on the Citizens Advisory Commission on Neighborhoods for the city of Glendale, Arizona.

Dr. Doris Marie Provine (Marie) is a Professor in the School of Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University. She came to ASU after a long tenure at Syracuse University and a two-year post as Director of the Law and Social Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation. Her areas of interest reflect her background in law and political science. Most of her research has focused on courts and policies related to them, most recently the role racism has played in the war on drugs.  Currently, Provine is studying policies around unauthorized immigration.  A year-long Fulbright research grant (2007-2008) allowed her to examine the issue from a cross-national perspective. With generous support from the National Science Foundation, she is studying how local police are responding to opportunities to collaborate with federal officials in the enforcement of federal immigration law. Dr. Provine serves on the Executive committee and Board of Trustees for the Law & Society Association and ACLU, she is the president of La Voz de Oro, a bilingual Toastmasters, and is active with the Promise Arizona (PAZ), Mi Familia Vota and Lutheran Social Services.

Professional Airways Systems Specialists/National AFL-CIO

Director of Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of Arizona; former Executive Director of Kids Voting Arizona

Professor Willrich joined the Phoenix School of Law as a full time faculty member in 2005. She considers herself to have come full circle in the pursuit of the law as a profession. Prior to teaching at PSL, Professor Willrich served as the first African American woman trial court judge in the history of the State of Arizona from 1999 to 2005. She served in the Juvenile, Criminal, and Family Division. However, she continues to serve the Court as a Judge Pro Tem.

From 1995 to 1999, Professor Willrich served as a Commissioner of the Superior Court in Maricopa County. She served in the Juvenile and Criminal Division. As a Juvenile Court Commissioner, Professor Willrich was appointed by the Supreme Court of Arizona to prepare the initial draft of re-drafted Juvenile Court Rules.

Prior to going on the bench in 1995, Professor Willrich was in private practice representing clients with legal problems in family, criminal, probate, juvenile, small business, non-profit management, and entertainment law.

Only a first year student at Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University, Rahul Prasai has already served as a Page at the US House of Representatives, Student Body President at McClintock High School, volunteered in the hospital of a third world country, and received National Scholar recognitions from various organizations. He became interested in politics at a young age. After migrating to the US with his mother at the age of eight, from Nepal, he started noticing vast disparities between the two polities immediately. Since then his interest in government and public service has only grown with age. Rahul has already committed to over a thousand community service hours in his short eighteen years of life. In the summer of 2011, he served as an intern at the Legal Aid Consultancy Centre in Kathmandu, Nepal, from which he attended an international conference on promoting Gender Responsive Democracy in South Asia. Rahul also serves as the Constitution and Bylaws Chair for the national award winning chapter of Pi Kappa Phi Fraternity at Arizona State University. Currently, he is pursuing a double major in Philosophy and Global Studies with a focus in Global Governance at ASU.

Vice Chair, Arizona Citizens for Election Reform

Board Member

Dr. Kravitz has had a long and distinguished social work career. His social action work began when he was still a graduate student at Columbia in 1948. In the middle of his graduate school studies Dr. Kravitz was off to Italy in the summers of 1948 and 1949 directing American Friends Service Committee (Quaker) volunteer work camps to aid in the reconstruction of war torn communities.

Upon the receipt of his MSW in 1950, he became the head of the New York Office of the American Friends Service Committee where he led Peace Education programs for college students and international seminars for foreign students.

In 1953, became the Associate Director of the Welfare Council of Delaware. In this position he led a statewide effort to improve housing conditions for migrant workers and sparked innovative approaches to urban renewal. Both activities led to legislative reforms and heightened public awareness of these issues.

CEO of Protecting Arizona's Family Coalition, the state's leading advocate for health and human services funding representing 20,000 social services workers

Diane had a deep sense of justice and was committed to building bridges across the spectrum of the justice movement so that every person, no matter the circumstances into which they were born, could have a safe place to live, health care, a good education, fair working conditions, and a living wage. We will always miss her spunk, her spirit, her wonderful sense of humor and her tireless dedication to the causes about which we all care.