Marshall Ganz Biography

Marshall Ganz was born in Bakersfield, California, to a Rabbi father and a teacher mother. In the fall of 1960, he enrolled at Harvard College. He dropped out a year before graduation to work with the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964. As an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he realized his "calling" and joined Cesar Chavez in his attempt to unionize California agricultural laborers in the fall of 1965. He obtained expertise in union, political, and community organizing during his 16 years with the United Farm Workers, rose through the ranks to become Director of Organizing, and was elected to the national executive board, where he served for eight years. In the 1980s, he collaborated with grassroots organizations to create new organizing programs and devise novel voter mobilization tactics for local, state, and national elections. He returned to Harvard College in 1991 to complete his undergraduate degree in history and government after a 28-year hiatus in order to enhance his intellectual knowledge of his job. In 1993, he received an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government, and in 2000, he earned his Ph.D. in sociology. He teaches, analyses, and publishes leadership, organization, and strategy in social movements, civic groups, and politics as a senior professor in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government. He has written for publications such as the American Journal of Sociology, the American Political Science Review, the American Prospect, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. His most recent book, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement, was released in 2009 and received the American Political Science Association's Michael J. Harrington Book Award. In 2010, the Episcopal Divinity School granted him an honorary degree in divinity. Marshall Ganz also teaches Leadership, Organizing, and Action: Leading Change, an online curriculum that educates civic leaders, advocacy organizations, and social movements on how to create communities that can mobilize power to effect change.

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