About

MEET THE COOPERATIVE

Research Team

Kate Diedrick, MA

Kate Diedrick is a researcher, oral historian, and campaign strategist whose background as a labor organizer enhances her work with unions, housing, and other community organizations tackling economic challenges. Based in Atlanta, she also has conducted campaign research for labor unions and strategic research for community organizations in Boston and Providence. An expert project manager, she draws on a wide-range of research techniques and communication strategies including video.  She holds a BA in English and American Studies from Grinnell College and an MA in the Public Humanities from Brown University.

Eric Dirnbach, Ph.D.

Eric is based in New York City and has been a researcher, organizer, campaigner, policy analyst and trainer for several unions for over 20 years. He got his start as an activist while in the leadership of the Graduate Employees Organization and anti-sweatshop movement at the University of Michigan in the 1990s. Since then he has worked with many labor solidarity organizations and worker centers. He has also been a member of several food and housing coops and currently is serving in the elected leadership of his NYC housing coop. He has degrees from Cornell and Michigan and is interested in building a more militant, democratic and powerful labor movement, in solidarity with the cooperative movement.

Abby Scher Ph.D.

Abby is a New York-based sociologist who brings a background in journalism and organizing to her research with communities and clients. She specializes in creating immensely accessible research so that it will have the greatest impact. As a longtime nonprofit professional, she is seasoned in crafting research and editorial tied to organizing campaigns and evaluation.  She is a former editorial and interim research director of a think tank, and was recognized by the Ford Foundation with a Leadership for a Changing World award for her cross-community organizing and media work.

Research Action offers state-of-the-art research for our clients in community, cooperative and labor organizations. We are a worker-owned firm of seasoned professionals who champion research and popular communication as vital and necessary to the project of social change.

We pride ourselves on helping turn research into effective communication tools and action no matter the scale — from a member survey, public information campaign or targeted policy push — to program evaluation that enlists members in a reflective process aimed at building the group’s power. Using surveys, government data, interviews, and strategic research sources, we highly value what both quantitative and qualitative research can teach us.  

Core to our mission is an awareness of the power relations in research across a range of social and economic inequalities.

Members:

  • Kate Diedrick
  • Eric Dirnbach
  • Biko Koenig
  • Abby Scher