Rich Stolz
Rich Stolz has served as OneAmerica’s Executive Director since August 2012. During his tenure, OneAmerica has cemented its status as one of the most effective organizing, advocacy, and civic engagement organizations in Washington State. Stolz was born in Seoul, South Korea. Stolz’s family moved to the United States when he was three, and he was raised by his mother in Redwood City, California. Stolz first cut his teeth in organizing while a student at Stanford University to create ethnic studies programs. In 1994, he organized to defeat proposition 187, an anti-immigrant ballot measure in California. Prior to OneAmerica, Stolz worked at the Center for Community Change, a national organization based in Washington, D.C. During that time, he focused on the intersection of policy, politics, and organizing across a broad spectrum of issues impacting low-income communities and communities of color, including jobs and income support policy, immigration policy, infrastructure investment ,and environmental justice. He has lived and organized in communities as diverse as Portland, Maine; Montgomery, Alabama; Tucson, Arizona; Washington, D.C.; and Seattle, Washington. Throughout his life, he has been deeply influenced by the civil rights movement and liberation theology in the context of Catholic social teaching. Together, these experiences affirmed his calling to social justice and human rights organizing and activism. In 2013, Stolz was honored by President Barack Obama as a Cesar Chavez Champion of Change alongside other leaders in the immigrant rights movement.