Board
Molly De Marco
Molly has lived in Chapel Hill since 2007. She started doing community organizing in Orange County in 2008 with Orange County Justice United by advocating for living wage policies. She has served on the editorial board for OrangePolitics since 2011. She is a board member of the Carrboro Bicycle Coalition and is currently the board chair of the InterFaith Council for Social Services. She is a founding board member of NEXT Chapel Hill-Carrboro and advocates for equitable bike-ped and public transit service. Molly is a Professor of Nutrition in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill, studying community-based strategies to build community food security. Through that work, she helped to launch the Orange County Food Council.
Allison De Marco
A Chapel Hill resident for over a decade, Allison De Marco works with several community organizations related to poverty, racial equity, and social justice. She served for 6 years, the last two as chair, on the Leadership Team of the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness (OCPEH). She now serves on the OCPEH project review committee, which reviews grant proposals that bring the bulk of our homeless service system funding to Orange County. She is a long-time volunteer with the Community Empowerment Fund (CEF), a relationship-based asset-development program for low-income residents of Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and Durham, North Carolina. With CEF, she co-teaches an economic justice course for undergraduate advocates and supervises MSW interns. In addition, she works to advance racial equity both in the community with Orange County Organizing Against Racism and as a research scientist at UNC’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, School of Social Work, and as equity lead for the Jordan Institute for Families.
Ryan Byars
Ryan has lived in Carrboro since 2015. His background includes social services administration, labor organizing, and prison education. He has previously served on the Recreation and Parks Commission and focuses his current efforts on bike and pedestrian advocacy and increasing access to greenspaces. Ryan currently works in information technology and he and his wife have three children.
Rene grew up in Jakarta, Indonesia, and has lived in the Chapel Hill and Carrboro area since 2019 when he started his PhD program in Sociology at UNC Chapel Hill. As a graduate student, he is passionate about building community around social issues such as local sustainability and inclusivity, especially connecting students with other townspeople. He enjoys music (including playing classical piano), linguistics and languages, and being outdoors either hiking, biking, or camping.