Staff
Andrea van den Heever, President
Andrea van den Heever (formerly Cole) is President of the Connecticut Center for a New Economy, a non-profit organization that has spearheaded the development of a broad-based movement that includes community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, civil rights groups and unions.
In the early 1980s she was a leader of the historic 10-week strike by Yale University’s clerical workers. A South African by birth, she also became a leader of the anti-apartheid movement in Connecticut.
Email: andrea@ctneweconomy.org
Renae Reese, Hartford Director
Renae Reese is the Hartford Director of the Connecticut Center for a New Economy. Prior to joining CCNE in 2004, Renae was the Vice President of AFT Local 3837 at the University of Connecticut Health Center. With the local she led a successful campaign to organize postdoctoral fellows. She was elected to union office while working as a researcher in the Division of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Previously she directed the Connecticut Council on Occupational Safety and Health, a labor education group, directed community programs for the Yale-China Association and taught English as a second language in Washington, D.C. and Taiwan. She taught certification courses in hazardous waste remediation and asbestos abatement.
Renae lives in Hartford with her husband and two daughters.
Email: renae@ctneweconomy.org
Ricardo Henriquez,
Director of Development and Administration
Ricardo Henriquez is currently the Director of Development and Administration at CCNE. Ricardo was born in the north of Chile and has degrees in Social Communication and Journalism. Currently he is working on a Master of Science in Management with a non-profit leadership concentration.
For five years he worked as a political journalist for Diario La Cuarta in Santiago, Chile, until 2001, when he decided to emigrate to the United States. Since then he has done all kinds, of jobs including dishwashing and waiting tables, which helped him realize the inequalities that immigrants suffer and which inspired him to go in the non-profit sector.
Ricardo was the Manager at Atticus Bookstore until May of 2006. In June of the same year he started working for GAVA, where he acted as the executive director until February of 2008. On February 18th of the same year, Ricardo started working for CCNE
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Shirley Lawrence, Lead Organizer
Prior to joining CCNE in 2000, Shirley Lawrence worked for 12 years in Yale University’s dining halls and was an active member and steward in UNITE HERE Local 35, the union of service and maintenance employees at Yale. In the union, she fought for community access to secure union jobs, and to improve the university’s commitments to the New Haven community.
A participant in Local 35’s Women’s Leadership Project, she led a new wave of women’s activism in her union. She is an active member of the NAACP.
Shirley lives in New Haven and has two children.
Email: lawrence@ctneweconomy.org
Fatima Rojas, Community Organizer
Fatima Rojas joined the CCNE staff in August 2007. Since 2005 she has been an active member of Unidad Latina en Acción and is a leader in the immigrants’ rights movement in New Haven. She was one of the lead organizers of the historic immigrants’ rights marches in New Haven in 2006, and has been deeply involved in the struggle to make the Elm City ID Card a reality.
In October and November 2006, she was a leader of the “Latino Citizens for Respect” project in Bridgeport, Norwalk, Stamford and Westport, working to mobilize the Latino communities in those cities to vote.
She lives in New Haven with her husband and daughter.
Email: fatimishi@ctneweconomy.org
Rhona Cohen, Commuity Organizer
Rhona Cohen joined the CCNE staff in July of 2007. For the previous year she was the Director of the Health Care for All Coalition, a statewide base of 50 organizations. She conducted outreach, training and policy analysis and lobbied the state legislature on many health care reform issues, including the issue of health care disparities.
A graduate of the New York City High School for the Performing Arts, she has completed doctoral work in English literature and taught writing and English at City University of New York for several years.
She lives in New Britain with her husband and son, where she is active in the NAACP and the Mary McCloud Bethune Club.
Email: rhona@ctneweconomy.org
Veronica Loaiza, Community Organizer
Verónica Loaiza was born in Quito, Ecuador and immigrated to the United States in 2002. Since she arrived in the country she has felt a strong connection with the issues affecting the Latino community.
In 2006 Veronica joined Latinos Citizens for Respect, and she actively worked with them encouraging Latino voters in Bridgeport to exercise their rights. Through this organization Veronica connected with the Connecticut Center for a New Economy’s Civic Leadership Institute, from which she graduated with another 25 New Haven residents.
Veronica started working as an organizer for CCNE in 2007. Currently she is actively organizing the community around issues of economic development and universal health care. She is married and the mother of two daughters, and lives in New Haven.
Email: vero@ctneweconomy.org
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