A lot, it turns out. At an opportunity fair on the last day of the Camp, Juanita met a representative from ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), who was looking for organizers to help mobilize around education issues. Energized by her Camp Wellstone experience and eager to apply the skills she learned, Juanita spent the next six months as a community organizer with ACORN and was then hired on the Kerry presidential campaign for the final months of the campaign. That led to a job the following year working as an organizer for the re-election campaign of the mayor of Minneapolis and for City Council Member Don Samuels.
By the time the 2005 election was over, Juanita had become an accomplished campaign organizer, and she was ready to take her skills to the next level. She applied for and was accepted to Wellstone Action's first Advanced Campaign Management School, held in December 2005. "I wanted to stay involved in politics," she said. "I started asking myself, ‘How can I do this and be in a leadership role?'"
At the Advanced Campaign Management School (ACMS), Juanita joined 50 other participants also looking to work as senior staff members or managers of campaigns. The five-day training provided participants with a set of hard skills in advanced campaign organizing and gave them opportunities to share their skills and experiences with their colleagues.
"ACMS pulled from everyone's personal experiences," Juanita said. "The people doing the training knew what they are talking about, and the participants had a lot to add. It was empowering to see how I could transition my organizing skills into being a senior staff member."
A week after the ACMS ended, Juanita got an opportunity to take her skills to a new job, when she was hired by the newly-elected mayor of St. Paul to coordinate his public appearances. In her work, she says the lessons of ACMS still resonate. "ACMS helped with the work I'm doing now: organizing and having a strategic plan," she said. "Putting together an actual plan is something I had never done before ACMS; I had always been the one implementing a plan that others wrote."
The training also introduced Juanita to a candidate for Minneapolis school board who asked Juanita to become her volunteer campaign manager. While she is keeping busy balancing a full-time job with the responsibilities of managing a campaign, Juanita finds the work energizing. "It allows me to make a difference and do what I love," she says.
When she's able to find the time, Juanita plans to pursue a master's degree in public policy and a law degree and is planning a career working in politics and civil rights issues.
