Melinda Wiggins joins the staff of the LIFT Fund as the Director of Strategy and Operations. Before joining the Fund, she served as the Executive Director of Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) for over twenty-five years. Through her work at SAF, Melinda led and supported efforts to create learning communities for young people interested in workers’ rights, facilitated community-labor alliances, built greater support for equity within the nonprofit sector, and educated philanthropy about the need to support agricultural workers in the South. In March 2012, she was honored by the Obama White House as a recipient of the “Cesar Chavez Champion of Change” award. Melinda helped initiate two key statewide coalitions in North Carolina–the Adelante Education Coalition and the Farmworker Advocacy Network—focused on immigrant and farmworker rights. She co-edited The Human Cost of Food, Farmworkers’ Lives, Labor, and Advocacy. A granddaughter and daughter of sharecroppers, Melinda grew up in a working class family in the Mississippi Delta. She moved to Durham, North Carolina, in 1992 to complete a Masters of Theological Studies at Duke University. She continues to live in Durham with her partner Dave and cat Cocoa.