Melinda Wiggins, MTS is the Director of Strategy and Operations at the LIFT Fund, which catalyzes deeper collaboration and investment between unions, philanthropy, movement-building community organizations, and academia to build worker power. Before joining LIFT, Wiggins served as the Executive Director of Student Action with Farmworkers (SAF) for over twenty-five years. Through her work at SAF, Wiggins led and supported efforts to create learning communities for young people interested in workers’ rights, facilitated community-labor alliances, built greater support 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 White House as a recipient of the “Cesar Chavez Champion of Change” award. Wiggins helped initiate two key statewide coalitions in North Carolina–the Adelante Education Coalition and the Farmworker Advocacy Network. She also co-edited The Human Cost of Food, Farmworkers’ Lives, Labor, and Advocacy. A granddaughter and daughter of sharecroppers, Wiggins grew up in a working class family in the Mississippi Delta. She received her Bachelor’s of Arts from Millsaps College in Jackson, MS, and her Master’s of Theological Studies from Duke University in Durham, NC.