Laxmi Haynes
Program Director |
919-660-3660
Laxmi Haynes coordinates SAF's Into the Fields Internship program, Alumni Association and directs the Into the Fields Theater Group. In 2001, after graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill, she participated in the Into the Fields program as a legal outreach intern in South Carolina. She currently serves on the board of Toxic Free NC and is a member of the NC Farmworker Health Program Advisory Board.

Nadeen Bir
Advocacy and Organizing Director |
919-660-3652
As a Palestinian-American, Nadeen Bir has always been passionate about social justice issues. She was first exposed to farmworker issues as an undergraduate at the College of Charleston, SC. Nadeen has worked to improve living and working conditions for farmworkers with SAF through various outlets- she was an intern in 2002, a board member in 2003, then as the internship coordinator in 2003 and 2004. For almost the last 5 years, Nadeen worked with El Centro Hispano in Durham, NC as the Director of Youth Programs to improve the lives of Latinos in Durham through education, organizing, and services. Nadeen has returned to the SAF team as Advocacy and Organizing Director at Student Action with Farmworkers.

Raúl Granados Gámez
Migrant Youth Director |
919-660-3652
Raúl Granados Gámez was born and raised in Unión de San Antonio, Jalisco México and moved to California in 1997 to learn English and better his education.  He comes from a farmworking family and is the first one of his family to graduate from a university. He attended California State University Long Beach where he obtained degrees in Theatre Arts and Translation and Interpretation Studies. In 2003 Raúl was an Into the Fields intern and part of the Levante Theatre Group, and in 2008 was the first Into the Fields Program Assistant and co-director of the theatre group. As the Migrant Youth Director he will be developing a theatre piece focused on the issues of education affecting many students across the country.

Joanna Welborn
Assistant Director |
919-660-3693
Joanna Welborn was born and raised in the foothills of Western North Carolina. While studying Sociology and Spanish at Appalachian State University, she participated in the Into the Fields Internship in 1996. She has studied documentary photography at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Maine and at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies. As the Assistant Director, Joanna works on SAF publications and the documentary program.

Melinda Wiggins
Executive Director |
919-660-3616
Melinda Wiggins, Executive Director of SAF, is the daughter and granddaughter of sharecroppers who grew up in a rural farming community in the Mississippi Delta. Melinda received a Masters of Theological Studies from Duke Divinity School in 1994. Melinda served as a SAF intern in the summer of 1993 and began working as SAF's Program Director in 1994. Melinda is the immediate past chair of NC Community Shares and a 1999-2001 fellow in the William C. Friday Wildacres Fellowship Program.