Alma Couverthie is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in grassroots, regional, and national organizing, coalition building, and leadership development. Currently serving as the chief of programs for the League of Women Voters, Alma is responsible for leading the integration and development of the League’s voter empowerment programs with the grassroots power needed to defend, expand, and protect voting rights for all in pursuit of true democracy reform. As the first national organizing director, Alma has been instrumental in modernizing the organizing practice by combining the power of relational and digital organizing with offline-online strategies and launching a regional organizing structure to support all levels of Leagues with place-based customized approaches.
Before joining the League, Alma was the deputy field director for immigration at Community Change, home of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement (FIRM), a nationwide campaign to achieve bold and comprehensive immigration reform. In that role, Alma managed the development and implementation of field strategies, base building, and leadership development, with a focus on race and gender equity, working with a strong network of 45 grassroots organizations across 33 states.
Alma's career began more than 20 years ago, organizing immigrant factory and textile workers with UNITE, and later with Lawrence CommunityWorks, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Alma's experience includes fighting for affordable housing and open space development, as well as launching a successful campaign for budget reform at the local level.
In her role as organizing director of workforce development and education at CASA, an organization at the forefront of the immigrant rights movement representing nearly 100,000 members, Alma led the organizing and leadership development efforts and successfully mobilized over 10,000 people to the White House on May Day 2017, to advocate for immigrant rights and workers justice.
In her spare time, Alma enjoys baking, music, taking her dogs for a walk, and traveling to her homeland, PR. It's rumored that Alma makes the best flan in the world.