Staff
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John F. Barros, Executive Director

John Barros, a lifelong resident of the Dudley neighborhood, became Executive Director after a national search in 2000. He has been involved since he was a teenager, serving as organizer, leader, and innovator in many ways. He was cofounder of DSNI’s Nubian Roots Youth Committee and helped start important DSNI youth programs such as college mentoring and job advocacy. John is the designer of the prominent 1993 “Unity through Diversity” mural. At age 17 he was the first youth elected to the DSNI Board of Directors. During 1997-98 John was elected Vice President of the DSNI Board. He also served a term as Vice-President of Dudley Neighbors, Inc. (DNI), the community land trust created to ensure land use control and permanent housing affordability.

John is a member of the 2005 Fellows class in the South African-United States Center for Leadership and Public Values and is a 2007 Barr Foundation Fellow. He serves on the Community Advisory Board for Northeastern University’s Race and Justice Institute and the Board of the New Democracy Coalition. He was elected Co-Chairperson of the Center for Community Builders, a national practitioner network. He was a member of the Aspen Institute’s Roundtable on Community Change.

John has received numerous awards including: the inaugural Community Service Award from the Boston Day & Evening Academy in 2008; the Robert Leo Ruffin Award from the Archdiocese of Boston in 2004; the Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD) Roxbury Community Award in 2000.

John is the co-owner of Restaurante Cesaria, a Cape Verdean restaurant in Boston. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and a candidate for a Masters in Public Policy from Tufts University.
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Jose Barros, Community Organizer & Planner

José M. Barros joined the DSNI staff in 1996. His areas of focus include education, parent organizing, civic engagement, safety-related issues and community outreach. Being an active resident in the Dudley neighborhood and passionate about community change, José has participated in various organizing campaigns sponsored by DSNI since its founding in 1984. He has provided and continues to provide support and assistance to so many people in the community that he cannot walk home for lunch without being stopped. His family is featured in the Holding Ground documentary about DSNI. He speaks, reads, and writes English, Cape Verdean Creole, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French. He is a regular presence on the community’s low power Cape Verdean radio station, Radio Nha Terra. He represented the community in the Boston Police Department’s Strategic Planning process in 1999.

Prior to joining DSNI, José worked as a Public Relations Liaison for the Consulate General of the Republic of Cape Verde in Boston. José is one of the founders and a current board member of the Cape Verdean Community Task Force (currently CVC UNIDO – Cape Verdean
Community UNIDO) formed in 1999. He served on the Board of Directors for Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers from 1995 to 2000. He was also elected as a community representative to the board of Boston Connects – Boston’s Empowerment Zone - from 1999 to 2003. He belongs to many other community associations. José is an active member of his parish, St. Patrick Church and has served on the parish’s Cape Verdean Council for many years.
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Luzia Centeio, Office Manager

Luzia has worked as the Executive Assistant/ Office Manager since July 2009. Prior to joining the staff, she was a community resident for over 30 years and has volunteered with DSNI since 1994 with the Nubian Roots youth committee, education committee and the annual Multicultural Festival. She attended Tufts University with a focus on Child Development and African/African-American Studies, and the University of Massachusetts Boston for Psychology and Black Studies. With an interest in children, youth and families, Luzia has also worked at the Boston Children's Museum, Cape Verdean Community UNIDO and the YMCA of Greater Boston.
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Ros Everdell, Deputy Director

Ros Everdell is Deputy Director of DSNI. She was previously Organizing Director and has been with DSNI since 1988. Her organizing work is known for its deep-rooted community engagement with a strong focus on youth development, education and partnerships. She helped to found the GOTCHA Youth Jobs Collaborative and the Boston Parent Organizing Network. She is featured in the book Streets of Hope by Medoff & Skar (South End Press, 1994) and the PBS documentary “Holding Ground” by Lipman & Mahan (New Day Films, 1995). Before coming to DSNI, she was the New England staff coordinator for the ’88 Jackson for President Campaign and the staff director for the Boston Rainbow Coalition. Prior to that, she worked as an organizer in New York City for ten years on welfare rights, food, hunger, and women’s issues. She holds a certificate from the Boston University Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership, and a Masters in Community Economic Development. Since 2004 she has been a field education supervisor for Boston College Graduate School of Social Work. She is a former board member of Neighborhood Involvement in Community Education Daycare and of the Haymarket People’s Fund.
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Denise Gonsalves, Director of Youth Leadership and Development

Denise Gonsalves rejoins DSNI as the Director of Youth Leadership Development after being away for the past 4 years earning her MBA and working as a Senior Associate Brand Manager at Kraft Foods. Prior to leaving, Denise worked in Roxbury and Dorchester for over 12 years developing youth programs, organizing coalitions, and mobilizing the community around civic engagement. She is passionate about expanding and coordinating youth leadership efforts in the community and helping organizations recognize the value of youth voices and action in community change efforts.

Denise’s involvement with DSNI started in 2000 through the Cape Verdean Task Force (later renamed Cape Verdean Community UNIDO), which she joined as the first Executive Director in 2003. In that role, she helped form the GOTCHA Collaborative, which employs youth year-round, and the Boston Connecting Cultures Mural Project. She was appointed by Mayor Menino to 3 task forces impacting the Dudley community: Voting Rights, School Readiness Action Planning and the Strand Theater Restoration. In addition, she held an organizational seat on the DSNI Board of Directors from 2003-2007 and was the Vice President of the DNI Board for 3 years.

An arts and crafts lover, Denise can often be found doing childcare at meetings or organizing ice breakers and activities.
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Robert Haas, Director of Special Projects

Robert (Bob) Haas is a long-term resident of the Dudley neighborhood, who has been dedicated for nearly 30 years to the revitalization and transformation of the residential streets and the Uphams Corner business district. He founded a neighborhood association and was instrumental in the founding of a several non-profit agencies, which include a com­munity development corporation, the local Main Street program, and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative. Over 15 years he served in a key fundraising and program planning capacity at the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation and with Upham’s Corner Main Street. As an initiator of projects, he has had a hand in the renovation or construction of more than 430 units of housing and 7 commercial buildings, and in the upgrading of businesses and storefronts in Upham’s Corner, where he served on the Board of Directors of the Strand Theatre, an important entertainment and performing arts anchor. In 1993 he inaugurated the Upham’s Corner Street Festival, which over 10 years brought more than 15,000 people to the business district.

Bob is both an activist and an artist, which led him on two occasions in the 1990s to perform a complete classical piano concert in the Strand Theatre. He is also a singer and has performed with Boston’s Back Bay Chorale since 2000. Bob is a world traveler, and a learner of languages. In his many off-the-beaten-track excursions he also developed a skill with photography. He has applied that talent in the Roxbury and Dorchester neigh­bor­hoods as well, and much of his work was on display in a 2002 photo exhibit, called Innocence and Hope
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May Louie, Director of Leadership & Capacity Building

May joined the DSNI staff in 1994 to manage its participation in Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Rebuilding Communities Initiative (RCI). Through this comprehensive community initiative, she convened the various components of DSNI in renewed visioning, planning, capacity building and demonstration. During the 1994-2001 RCI period, DSNI matured in its community building role, and developed significant organizational and community capacity. May organized community stakeholders to participate in a national RCI learning community. In her current role, Director of Leadership and Capacity Building, May’s responsibilities include civic engagement; neighborhood governance through DSNI’s community-elected Board of Directors; Thrive in Five; and the Resident Development Institute (RDI) which is the umbrella for DSNI’s learning, leadership development, consulting, documentation and policy efforts. She also serves as Project Director for the Boston Promise Initiative. May has authored several articles and papers
on DSNI’s change strategies.

May serves on the National Community Land Trust Academy Advisory Board and is a member of its Curriculum Committee. She holds an MPP from Tufts University’s Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning program, and a BA in Sociology from Brandeis University.
She was a 2005 Alston-Bannerman Fellow and now serves on the selection committee for the fellowship. She was a 2006 Rockwood Leadership Program Leading from the Inside Out Fellow. May has her roots in the Asian American community as well as multi-racial electoral coalitions. She is currently a designer/ facilitator for an Asian American Activist Training Institute.
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Alicia Mooltrey, MSW, Education Organizer

Alicia Mooltrey was raised in the Dudley neighborhood and began volunteering at DSNI in 2005. Soon after, she became the GOTCHA Youth Jobs Collaborative Coordinator and worked for GOTCHA during subsequent summers. Upon graduating from George Washington University in 2008, she became the fulltime GOTCHA Coordinator for summer and year round jobs. In addition to her direct work with youth, she organized and facilitated GOTCHA’s partner planning meetings, built its capacity, and maintained the shared GOTCHA website.

As part of her Masters program, she completed placements at Boston Day and Evening Academy (a BPS alternative high school) and at Home for Little Wanderers doing play therapy with children in Head Starts in the Roxbury neighborhood. During this time, she also worked at Casa Myrna Vasquez domestic violence shelter. In 2011 she completed her Masters in Social Work at Boston College with a clinical concentration focusing on children, youth and families. Since then she has rejoined DSNI as an education organizer. This entails collaborating with school administrators, parents, students and other community organizations to create positive change in the education of the youth in our communities.

In 2010, The Philanthropic Foundation awarded her a Boston Neighborhood “Unsung Heroes” Fellowship. In the same year she received a First One’s Award from Access Boston.
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Ayesha Rodriguez, Community Organizer, Dudley Children Thrive

Ayesha Rodriguez joined DSNI as a Community Organizer in 2011. She was born and raised in Roxbury and has strong connections to the community. Before coming to DSNI, she worked with adult learners and pregnant and parenting teens through Crittenton Hastings House, Dimock Community Health Center, and the Boston Public Schools. She concentrated on offering support, life skills sessions, and job readiness training to increase clients’ capacity in the areas of parenting, education, and career.

A lover of culture and language, she is trilingual and enjoys the diversity that exists throughout Boston and the local neighborhoods. As the coordinator for Dudley Children Thrive, Ayesha is focused on making sure that families and informal providers are closely connected to the quality services needed to prepare their children to be highly successful in their academic careers.
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Harry Smith, Director of Sustainable and Economic Development and Dudley Neighbors Inc.

Harry Smith has been DSNI’s Director of Sustainable and Economic Devlopment since September, 2011. In that capacity he supports residents to actively participate in planning, land use, and design processes in Roxbury and North Dorchester to ensure that proposed projects meet the community’s needs and vision. He also directs operations of Dudley Neighbors Incorporated, the community land trust established by DSNI to ensure resident control and permanent affordability of property in the neighborhood.

Harry has more than twenty years experience in community organizing and planning in Boston’s neighborhoods. Before coming to DSNI, Harry served as Director of Organizing and Community Planning at the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation and consulted with numerous community and youth organizations on organizing, community development and leadership initiatives. A graduate of Brown University, Harry has a Masters in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University.
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Travis Watson, Community Organizer & Planner

Travis has worked as a community organizer since early January 2007. His present tasks include community outreach and workforce development. He was first introduced to DSNI while his father, Greg, was the executive director during the late 90’s. Though living on Cape Cod at the time, Travis kept the organization close to heart. He graduated from Brandeis University in May of ‘06 with a BA in African and African-American Studies. His primary area of interest is achieving greater access for Boston residents, minorities and females to construction jobs within the city. He convened and facilitated the Dudley Workforce Committee which achieved unprecedented success in securing construction jobs and sub-contracts for local residents, people of color, and women. He is in the process of finalizing a Best Practices manual to guide
equitable hiring in major construction projects in Boston. Mayor Menino recently appointed Travis to the Boston Employment Commission. Additionally, Travis is an amateur photographer and shoots events for DSNI and other neighborhood organizations.
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Jason Webb, Director of Administration and Finance

Jason has worked at DSNI since 2001, staffing the community land trust and the community planning functions around physical and economic development. As Director of the community land trust, he created a youth development / youth jobs program, CommunityScapes. Over the years, this land stewardship and community outreach program has hired significant numbers of youth and young adults, including new immigrants and young people with criminal records. In 2011 Jason became the Director of Administration and Finance, coordinating the financial, administrative, and human resource activities of the DSNI and its sister community land trust, DNI. In addition, he has played a significant role in DSNI’s internal technology capacity as well as the use of technology innovations in the community building process. Jason joined the DSNI staff after a long history of involvement as a dedicated resident volunteer, dating from the age of seven. He was a co-founder of Nubian Roots Youth Committee, and served on the boards of both
DSNI and Dudley Neighbors, Inc.

Jason holds a certificate from the Boston University Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership and is currently enrolled at Springfield College of Human Service in Boston.