© David S. Holloway for the Open Society Institute

For 25 years, Marcy Westerling has been a leader in organizing rural communities in the Pacific Northwest to respond to violence, bigotry, and injustice. In 1992, she founded the Rural Organizing Project, which helps local grassroots groups overcome their isolation, pool resources, and acquire skills to achieve lasting social change.

For her Open Society Fellowship project, Westerling will map progressive infrastructure in rural localities in four states as a means of identifying potential allies for social change. She will use this information as the basis for an ambitious effort to link disparate issues and constituencies through what she calls "transformational organizing."

Westerling graduated from Smith College and is a longtime resident of Scappoose, Oregon. She contributed an essay to the anthology Lessons from the Field: Organizing in Rural Communities.  In 2003, Westerling was selected by the Ford Foundation to be a recipient of its "Leadership for a Changing World" award.