Catherine Petrusz joined NCRC in 2021 and works with NCRC members and banks on community reinvestment campaigns. Before joining NCRC, Catherine was a senior member of the legal team and head of compliance for Self-Help, a national community development financial institution. Catherine is excited to combine her legal and banking background with data analysis to help ensure that the Community Reinvestment Act achieves its original intent. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the UCLA School of Law Program in Public Interest Law and Policy.

Gerald (Jerry) Kellman has worked with NCRC as a Senior Advisor since 2014. He works on community benefits agreements; regional reinvestment coalitions, campaigns and summits; and capacity building for member organizations.

Jerry Kellman began organizing as part of the civil rights movement. He cofounded the Gamaliel organizing network and developed grassroots organizations in urban, suburban and rural communities throughout the Midwest. In 1985, he recruited and brought Barack Obama to Chicago, where he mentored him as an organizer. He was the media spokesperson for community organizing in the 2008 Obama for President campaign, spoke at the 2008 Democratic Convention, and was written about under the pseudonym Marty Kaufman in Barack Obama’s book Dreams of My Father.

He has worked as a lay ecclesial minister for the Archdiocese of Chicago, completed two years of postgraduate studies in Public Policy at the University of Chicago and holds masters’ degrees in Journalism from Northwestern University and Divinity from Loyola University. His work has been covered in numerous media outlets including the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, PBS Frontline, Le Monde, the Economist and the Wall Street Journal.

Juan Leyton is NCRC’s Director of Organizing. Prior to joining NCRC, Juan was most recently at Madison Park Development Corporation. He is the former director of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Neighbor to Neighbor Massachusetts and City Life/Vida Urbana. He was a Barr Foundation and MIT Community Innovators Lab fellow. He holds Masters Degrees in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University and in Public Policy from Tufts University.