吃瓜大本营

Melinda serves as the executive director of the ACLU of Wisconsin. As the first woman of color to lead the ACLU of Wisconsin in its more than 90-year history, Melinda will guide the affiliate in strategic planning and overall vision for the organization with a community-forward, collaborative, and DEI focus.

Melinda has a track record of conceptualizing and implementing the strategic vision, community building and strengthening, anticipating and acting on critical situations, successfully translating vision into action and deep experience in anti-racist and anti-oppressive work.

鈥淢any of the issues I am devoted to reveal the way difference weaponized, made the problem, rather than honoring difference, being accountable to justice, and supporting communities held at the margins,鈥� Melinda said. 鈥淢y commitment to this work is informed by scholarship and action, much of which was done by women of color, queer people of color, and other multiply marginalized leaders who speak truth to power.鈥�

Before joining the ACLU, Dr. Brennan served as a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Board Consultant for the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition Project, training and educating board members about disability, race, and class issues related to mobility justice.

Born and raised in Wisconsin, Melinda earned her bachelor鈥檚 degree in women鈥檚 studies and her master鈥檚 degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She went on to earn her doctorate in gender studies at Indiana University, where she wrote a dissertation on the nexus between hate acts, nationalism, white supremacy, and American Islamophobia.