Our Team
Kansas for All is a coalition of seasoned organizers who collectively have over five decades of expertise in electoral campaign organizing, progressive policy, community organizing, leadership development and base building., and are coming together to build a new statewide organization. Our team is diverse, multi-disciplinary and adaptive, achieving success in system changes and social justice issues in housing, racial equity, ending mass incarceration, reproductive rights, and immigration justice. We believe the people of Kansas’ core values are rooted in the determination to thrive.
Elise Higgins
Elise Higgins is a nationally recognized abortion policy expert and a community organizer. They lobbied the Kansas Legislature from 2013 to 2017 with Kansas NOW and Planned Parenthood. During that time, Elise served as the state’s primary spokesperson, electoral strategist, organizer, and coalition convener for abortion rights.
In 2017, Elise began the PhD program at the University of Kansas in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. That career shift catalyzed their embrace of local organizing and campaigns. They served in leadership roles with the Graduate Teaching Assistants Coalition-AFT Local 6403, Lawrence Mutual Aid Network, Sanctuary Alliance-Lawrence KS, Plymouth United Church of Christ, and the Kansas Abortion Fund. Elise also managed four successful local campaigns in 2020, 2021, and 2024 alongside Sam Allison-Natale .
Currently, Elise consults for state and national abortion rights organizations and serves on the board of Kansas Interfaith Action while completing their forthcoming dissertation on abortion stigma and the Kansas legislature.
Founder and Board Member
Mariel Ferreiro
Mariel Ferriero is a seasoned community organizer with over 15 years of progressive wins in housing/homelessness and immigration justice. Mariel supports Kansas’s social justice movements through policy building, community conflict navigation and transformative justice.
In 2019, Mariel co-founded Sanctuary Alliance, an immigration advocacy group that fought for and won a policy plan to make Kansas’s first Sanctuary City. Mariel has continued her immigration work statewide advocating for legislation that supports immigrant communities and fights back against harmful anti-immigrant rhetoric. Mariel also works and organizes in the housing justice movement.
She currently works for the national social justice organization TheCaseMade as their in-house expert in affordable housing policy and programming. Mariel’s approach is to help communities tap into their collective power through training, facilitation and mentorship. Mariel is disciplined in community holistic health, wellness as a trained somatic practitioner, yoga body work facilitator.
Treasurer
SecretarySam Allison-Natale
Sam Allison-Natale is a public defender, organizer, and the Executive Director of Kansas Holistic Defenders. Sam began his legal career shortly after college during Occupy Wall Street, which motivated him to become a movement lawyer. He graduated from NYU School of Law in 2015 and joined the Bronx Defenders as a staff attorney, where he learned to combine multidisciplinary legal and social services to help clients beyond the limits of traditional public defense.
Sam joined the Jail No Campaign in Lawrence in 2019, a community effort to stop the expansion of the local jail. With movement colleagues, Sam worked locally to recruit and run a progressive candidate for district attorney, as well as two county commissioners on the “Justice Ticket,” a slate dedicated to ending mass incarceration and investing in services. In 2021, Sam founded Kansas Holistic Defenders (KHD) with a board of leaders from those organizing campaigns, and won a county contract to begin KHD in 2022. Since then, KHD has doubled in size, and expanded to include civil legal services, eviction defense, and community organizing.
Vice-chairJohn Baker
John Baker is a Missouri-licensed attorney who has spent the past several years supporting legal defense and advocacy efforts for Kansans facing eviction, criminal charges, and other systemic injustices. A Salina, Kansas native with working-class roots in customer service and the construction trades, John became politically active during the COVID era and the George Floyd uprising, organizing alongside community leaders frustrated by the limits of traditional party politics. In 2024, he ran for the Kansas Senate in his home district—one that, like much of Kansas, appears deeply red. That campaign revealed both the widespread desire for change among everyday Kansans and the complete absence of any organization capable of developing leaders or sustaining engagement year-round. John joined the board of Kansas for All because he believes Kansas needs a durable, multiracial working-class political home—one that builds power every day, not just during elections.
Jason Maymon
Jason has been a community organizer with Topeka Justice, Unity & Ministry Project (JUMP ) since 2022 where he has organized congregations in Shawnee County to build faith-based people power. Through that power-building, he has worked on (or continues to work on) issue campaigns surrounding mental health, violence reduction, affordable housing, homelessness, and more. Before becoming a community organizer, Jason developed extensive canvassing experience through his employment at Greenpeace USA, and the Florida Democratic Party where he registered younger voters. He has a deep understanding of what it takes to build relational power through structured networks of people, and why that power is needed to reshape our institutions.
Board Member 
Adriana Flores
Adriana has an unwavering belief that those suffering from systemic problems know the issues and if people collectively insist, necessary changes are possible. She attended Michigan State University and obtained an MSW in Organizational and Community Leadership. She has worked as a social worker for families experiencing housing crises, an advocate for individuals with disabilities experiencing potential abuse or neglect in an institutional setting, and a community organizer who supported community members in tackling community issues they voted to address. Outside of work she volunteers with Lawrence Tenants (a grassroots activist group focused on housing justice), was the finance committee co-chair of Riverwalk Theater, was a board member for Helping Women Period, and worked to put in place a community box with hygiene products in Lansing, Michigan.
Chair