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MVOC promoted its lead community organizer to executive director
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning Valley Organizing Collaborative has promoted DaMareo Cooper from lead community organizer to executive director.
Cooper, who’s been with the MVOC for seven years, succeeds Heather McMahon, who has served as the community organization’s executive director since June 2012.
Since January 2013, McMahon also has served as managing director of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, which oversees the MVOC and six other similar organizations statewide. OOC and the MVOC share office space at the Ohio One Building on East Boardman Street in downtown Youngstown.
McMahon exclusively will be managing director of OOC, focusing on fundraising, development, financial work, budgets, data collection and communications.
“The goal was by 2015 for OOC to handle all of that work allowing the regional collaboratives to focus on organizing efforts,” she said. “They can get bogged down by the business work.”
Also, MVOC has hired three community organizers: Lynn Bilal and Akim Lattermore, based out of its Youngstown office, and Miles Johnson in Warren. Remaining in Warren will be DeAudra Edgerson.
Three organizers left MVOC in recent months, McMahon said.
“It’s a new crop, and we’re really excited,” she said. “The people who left had other goals and went to [similar] organizations.”
MVOC, created in 2008, is a community organization that partners with neighborhood groups, faith-based institutions, labor unions and nonprofits in Mahoning and Trumbull counties focusing on improving the quality of life for residents by improving neighborhoods.