Who We Are
PL+US: Paid Leave for the United States is a bold new organization with a single mission: win paid family leave for everyone in the United States. Our strategy layers public advocacy and accountability campaigns with state-of-the-art communications and digital grassroots engagement to win ambitious solutions for working people in the United States.
Our Team
Katie Bethell, Founder & Executive Director is a senior leader and organizer with nearly 15 years of digital advocacy and mobilization experience. She was the Campaign Director at MomsRising.org for four years, where, as a member of the founding team and active participant in national and state coalitions on work/family policy, Katie developed and won local, state, and national campaigns for family-friendly public policy. Her portfolio included work to win passage of statewide paid family leave in New Jersey and Washington State, paid sick days legislation in Connecticut, and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
Following MomsRising, Katie was Managing Director of North America Campaigns at Change.org, where she oversaw the team that ran hundreds of impactful public campaigns in the US, including the campaign that launched Trayvon Martin’s shooting to national attention in 2012 (2.2 million supporters) and the campaign that ended the Boy Scouts anti-gay policy. In 2014, Katie was named one Fast Company's ‘Most Creative People in Business’.
Brianna Cayo Cotter, Chief of Staff helped found and lead Change.org's global communications program, where she helped influencers, non-profits, companies, and news organizations create big impact in the world as the Head of Global Partnerships. For over a decade she has developed creative, effective communications strategies to help advance social change, leading media and communications departments at Avaaz, Rainforest Action Network, and the Energy Action Coalition.
She lives in Washington DC with her beagle mutt and is passionate about big trees and paid family leave.
Orli Cotel, Director of Strategy served as the Deputy Communications Director for the National Sierra Club, where she directed branding and publicity for the country's largest grassroots environmental organization and placed stories in outlets such as Good Morning America, The Oprah Winfrey Show, the New Yorker, Time Magazine and the New York Times. She led a team of 14 communications strategists as Communications Director for the groundbreaking Beyond Coal campaign, which won retirements of over 200 coal-fired power plants across the U.S. For 9 years, she was also the producer and host of Sierra Club Radio, a nationally-syndicated progressive talk show that ran on 40 stations across the country. During that time she recorded over 1,500 interviews with thought leaders and authors such as Robert F Kennedy Jr, Arianna Huffington, Barbara Kingsolver, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jane Goodall, and over a dozen governors and mayors. She holds a B.A in Comparative Literature and Spanish from Washington University, St. Louis and is a proud graduate of Green Corps, the Field School for Environmental Organizing.
Annie Sartor, Program Director is a longtime activist and corporate campaigner. She has successfully challenged some of the largest corporations in the world to change their internal policies to incorporate principles of environmental and social responsibility. As a Senior Campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, she organized and mobilized activists across the country to effectively demand that Wall Street banks reduce investment in fossil fuels, and eliminate entirely investment in the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia. She also coordinated campaigns for environmental health, amplifying the voices of those most impacted by climate change and environmental pollution from the oil and gas industry at Breast Cancer Action and the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments.
Andrea Zuniga, Legislative Director & Counsel served as the Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Federal Affairs for Mayor Bill de Blasio and assisted with the development and implementation of his personnel order that provided New York City employees six weeks of fully paid parental leave that can be combined with existing accrued leave for a total of twelve weeks. Experienced with moving legislation on the federal, state, and local level, Andie has coordinated multi-organization coalitions on immigration, infrastructure and workers rights. As a Legislative Representative, she played a key role in the historic AFL-CIO and US Chamber of Commerce agreement on the future flow of guest workers that passed the Senate as part of a comprehensive immigration reform bill.
She lives in Mount Vernon, Maine and enjoys fly fishing, hunting, and taking her chocolate lab out to the pond.
Jenn Kauffman, Advocacy Director served as Senior Vice President at Revolution Messaging, the digital agency behind Bernie Sanders’ groundbreaking presidential campaign, and led the agency's advertising department during the 2016 cycle, where advised and trained clients and organizations on how to harness the power of digital organizing to champion progressive values. Previously, she worked within the labor movement for a decade, focusing on state-based political and union organizing. She got her start in politics as Deputy Director of Internet Operations for the Gore campaign in 2000 when she was just 20.
After graduating from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Georgia, Jenn moved to Washington, D.C. to work with a number of national advocacy and labor organizations, striving to drive a national conversation and lift up the voices of underrepresented communities. Most notably, she led state communications for the AFL-CIO while unions organized unprecedented protests across the country to protect collective bargaining, and later helped to forge labor and immigrants rights' coalitions.
Sarah Layton, Finance Director is a committed reproductive justice advocate who also loves talking about money. As the Director of Finance & Operations at If/When/How: Lawyering for Reproductive Justice, she built scalable systems that supported the organization through growth and a successful rebrand. Sarah has worn many non-profit hats over the years, and loves to work on passionate, mission-driven teams. She is most proud of her work with ACCESS Women's Health Justice, where she is currently serving as Co-Chair of the board. Sarah holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature & Society from Columbia University, and was a Speaking Race to Power Fellow in winter of 2016.
Jenna Mowat, Campaign Manager developed both digital and field operations during two political campaign cycles. In 2016, she served as a community organizer in Ohio and successfully mobilized volunteers to register hundreds of voters, knock on hundreds of doors and make thousands of phone calls, which resulted in her county being one of four that turned blue.
In addition to her grassroots experience, Jenna has also worked in the international political arena. In 2015, she served as an attaché to the United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations. In this capacity, she served on the General Assembly’s Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee. She also coordinated several high-level events on women’s economic empowerment and the post-2015 development agenda for the UK Prime Minister. Jenna holds a B.A. in Political Science from Occidental College.
Bri Barnett, Development Manager has extensive experience in a variety of movements including labor, tenants rights, climate change LGBT rights, and anti-racist organizing. Professionally, Bri has designed and implemented fundraising systems, grown signature galas, deepened business relationships, and written fundraising materials for the SF LGBT Center, Horizons Young Professionals for Equality, Causa Justa :: Just Cause, and Transgender Law Center. Worker rights were Bri's first exposure to activism through United Students Against Sweatshops, and they could not be more thrilled to apply their fundraising skills at PL+US to securing better workplaces for everyone.
In their free time, Bri enjoys cooking, reading, playing basketball, practicing and teaching mindfulness, and organizing with Showing Up for Racial Justice.
Fabiola Santiago, Campaign Manager is a passionate social justice activist, researcher, and public health professional. She has produced research to support public policies that affect low-income immigrant communities and communities of color. Some issue areas include the school-to-prison pipeline, higher education for incarcerated people, payday loans, housing developments, and wage theft. She is most proud of her research with the Los Angeles Coalition Against Wage Theft. Her research was widely used by the coalition, council members, and other stakeholders to help pass the local ordinance. The research was also published in the California’s State Judiciary Committee’s bill analysis and used to help advocate and pass the state bill. Fabiola has also helped organize health professionals to support social campaigns and movements as a way to improve health equity.