Young Alumni Award: Alicia Gurrieri ’09 Organizes and
Advocates for Voting Rights and Gender Justice

Alicia Gurrieri was presented with the Young Alumni Award at the Dinner Among Friends on Alumni Weekend. Her combination of direct service and advocacy experience provides her with a lens to understand the importance of meeting immediate needs while building toward structural change. Alicia works on a daily basis to achieve equality, one of the Quaker SPICES infused throughout the MFS curriculum and daily life.

Alicia is a Donor Organizing Field Manager with the Movement Voter Project (MVP); which has deep roots in statewide organizing ecosystems and is dedicated to helping move money and resources to support local grassroots groups across the country. The MVP vision is centered on building deep grassroots power on a local level year-round to expand access to democracy and create a better world where all can thrive. Alicia leads MVP’s efforts to grow a robust network of volunteer organizing and fundraising teams. She is deeply committed to investing in grassroots power for sustainable change.

After graduating from Northwestern University with a B.A. in Psychology and Gender Studies, Alicia started her career in direct-service connecting people to resources such as housing, food, and healthcare. At the Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women’s Network, she was a Centralized Training Institute Research Assistant where she focused on domestic violence training. As a Health Educator for the South Jersey AIDS Alliance, she was involved with risk-reduction behavior intervention efforts, and worked to support clients and organize resources from hospitals, shelters and food pantries. She then worked with the National Women’s Law to address systemic change through policy advocacy.

After receiving her master’s degree in political management from George Washington University, she spent four years as a National Organizing Manager with the League of Women Voters, building their national organizing team; leading trainings and mobilizations; and supporting local, state, and federal campaigns to protect and advance voting rights. In 2022, she joined the Movement Voter Project, and now works with over 700 League affiliates in every state to advance federal, state, and local campaign strategies to create a stronger democracy and build people-powered movements. Alicia paid tribute to several classmates and friends also doing great things in their careers: Hannah Spielberg ’09 (Social Work and Psychotherapy), Gaby Martínez Kalu ’09 (Education), and Hannah Levy ’09 (Entertainment – Writing/Directing). “If our high school selves were to meet us, I think we’d find that we’re doing exactly what we dreamed we’d be doing,” she said. “MFS was a place that encouraged discourse around power dynamics, systemic oppression, and privilege. It challenged us to identify where there is injustice and to think about what we can do about it.”

She closed by imploring the audience to do their part to educate themselves and others about important issues related to the upcoming November elections: “My ask of you all today is to think about what you all can do in the next few months to be able to look back with no regrets, from volunteering, to donating, to community organizing, to talking to your families about tough issues. We all have the power to make a difference. Martin Luther King, Jr. said ’The arc of the moral universe bends toward justice,’ yes, but I’ve heard another version of that quote which says the arc of the moral universe bends towards those who pull it hardest. So I’m going
to pull, and I ask that you all pull with me.”