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BENJAMIN COKELET

Graduate School of Arts and Science
Master of Arts, May 2010
Concentration: International Politics/International Business
Bio and Resume (.pdf)
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After 12 years as a global union organizer and researcher in the United States and Latin America, Ben Cokelet founded the Project on Organizing, Development, Education, and Research (PODER) in 2008. PODER is a corporate accountability firm whose mission is to strengthen democracy and development in Latin America. Tired of corruption and illegality thwarting the efforts of workers and communities to shine a light on impunity, Ben started PODER to empower civil society organizations with information, strategic know-how, and capacity-building services to engage companies and hold them accountable for corporate malfeasance. Together with these groups, PODER builds in the missing checks and balances to ensure accountability in Latin America. In 2009, Ben and the team of PODER won the $100,000 Stewart Satter Family Prize in the NYU Stern Business School Social Venture Competition.

In 2002 Ben moved to Mexico to work with the Solidarity Center, where he honed his skills at collecting and analyzing business intelligence, communicating his findings, and holding corporations accountable. He has coordinated corporate accountability campaigns and research projects in countries like Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic, affecting meaningful change with uncooperative companies. Currently he brings these skills and experiences to PODER.

Ben's career is predicated upon a passion for social justice. He has acted on this passion in various ways: starting a youth group in Seattle; founding a coalition to unionize service workers in college; volunteering in West Africa, Eastern Europe, Northern Ireland, and South America as a human rights advocate and development worker; organizing low-wage employees in Washington State to win health care; and leading international campaigns on behalf of Mexican laborers making poverty-level wages working at multinational corporations. However, the commitment he is most proud of is one that continues to define his life's work: promoting multi-stakeholder partnerships that bring together both extremes of the wealth gap to ensure socio-economic equality.