Elly Matsumura

Elly Matsumura is California Director for PowerSwitch Action, a national network of 21 grassroots organizations forging multiracial feminist democracies and economies in their cities and towns. She brings together the local organizing of seven California affiliates into a statewide force to fight for working people and communities of color to govern in the world’s fourth largest economy.

Having joined PowerSwitch in 2018 as the first California Director, Elly has led the network to become a key player in movement building and worker power in the state. She is a co-founder and leader in the California Coalition for Worker Power, uniting dozens of worker centers, advocates, policy experts and labor unions to advance transformative campaigns and programs to scale worker organizing in the state - having won over $100 million in State funds to date. She served on the leadership team that created the Movement Innovation Collaborative - an organizer-led effort to amplify and accelerate the field of power building - where she now sits on the board of directors. She also co-founded Safety Net for All to demand unemployment benefits for undocumented Californians, co-leading the campaign to win over $800 million in direct funds for those excluded from COVID-era unemployment and federal stimulus.

Elly spent 13 years with Working Partnerships USA, where she spearheaded the coalition campaign to pass the nation’s most comprehensive living wage policy, created leadership and governance training programs replicated in over a dozen regions across the country, and provided strategic advising to sister organizations on wide-ranging policy campaigns. As a consultant for the County of Santa Clara, she developed the Census 2020 Strategic Plan, which was recognized as a model for the state.

She lives in downtown San Jose with her partner, two teenagers, and two cats.