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About Us
The Georgia Strategic Alliance for New Directions and Unified Policies (Georgia STAND-UP) provides research, strategy, technical support, and resource development for grassroots community organizing and non-partisan voter education. Founded in 2005 as a labor/community partnership, STAND-UP has emerged as a champion of community empowerment and progressive advocacy across the South. A tax-exempt, 501(C)3 non-profit, STAND-UP has earned the Guidestar Platinum Seal of Transparency.
STAND-UP operates on the principle of seeding communities with movement-building skills. Its goal is to identify and elevate grassroots leadership, an investment in people that creates durable capacity; that is, human infrastructure tailored to the community in which it operates. That infrastructure represents permanent capacity to confront issues, as well as the political savvy, networking ability, and communications know-how to handle them. It enables marginalized communities to effectively confront policies and trends that threaten their wellbeing.
Relying on collaborative strategies, strategic partnerships, and aggressive grassroots organizing, STAND-UP helped initiate innovative campaigns to champion equity and inclusion, including the use of transit-oriented development as a mobilizing issue in the Atlanta region. By employing intensive voter education and superior organizing skills to win large scale victories ”such as regional transit expansion”STAND-UP has distinguished itself as a visionary advocate for change, setting the stage for its own continued growth as a vital, digitally savvy progressive force throughout the southeast.
Deborah Scott
Chief Executive Officer
Deborah Scott, CEO of Georgia STAND-UP, a “think and act tank” for working families, and a 2012 “White House Champion of Change,” is an accomplished advocate of economic inclusion, community empowerment, and progressive civic engagement. A master organizer, strategist, and highly skilled trainer, she has been on the front lines of progressive social transformation for more than 25 years. Deborah has shaped and molded a generation of social activists.
Her motivational talks and workshops in leadership, basic organizing, public policy analysis, civic education, and non-partisan voter mobilization have fueled numerous conferences, rallies, demonstrations, and direct actions, advancing the causes of social equality, economic equity, and respect for basic human rights. Her impact has been felt across the spectrum of leading progressive issues: civil rights and race discrimination; voting rights and voter suppression; workers rights, affordable housing; environmental justice and health equity, job training and employment; and criminal justice reform, among others. She is a builder of partnerships and collaborations, uniting neighborhood groups, labor organizations, academic
institutions, business interests, environmentalists, and government agencies into working coalitions to advance policies and programs that lift up working families, neglected neighborhoods, and historically underserved populations.
Joel Caldwell
Program Director
Joel Caldwell’s role at STAND-UP has evolved over the years. He began as a poll worker and volunteer. In 2015, he became a supervisor of Georgia Build-UP, a workforce development program, where he participated in the revitalization of Vine City Park and the building of English Avenue Park. The Georgia Build-UP role resulted in his advancement to program coordinator. He began coordinating events, including the highly successful “STAND UP and Vote” campaign in 2016. In 2018 he became STAND-UP’s Operations Manager, taking the reins of voter registration efforts, including Get Out the Vote Campaign, that generated over 7,000 registrations and 50,000 calls made to voters across the State of Georgia.
Kate Little
Housing Specialist
Kate Little serves as the housing specialist at Georgia STAND-UP, where she focuses on housing policy issues. She formerly served as president and CEO of Georgia Advancing Communities Together, Inc., a statewide network of nonprofit housing and community development organizations. She has also served as the Atlanta Director of The Enterprise Foundation working with community development corporations in neglected neighborhoods. Kate has additional experience with the Georgia Housing Finance Authority, the Atlanta Housing Authority, and serves as a member of Fifth Third Bank’s National Community Advisory Forum.
Ariel Singleton
Lead Organizer
Ariel A’nette Singleton was born at Reynold’s Army Hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma, on July 7, 1995. She grew up in a military-oriented, educational valued, morally conscious family with a strong musical background. Ariel graduated from Georgia State in 2018 and immediately went into the workforce. Following a year of corporate employment, Ariel decided to seek a career closer to her passions and degrees. Ariel is now working as Lead Organizer and Executive Assistant. She is an accomplished advocate of economic inclusion, community empowerment, and progressive civic engagement.
Kenneth Nellum
Program Associate
Nia Momon
Program Associate
