»Meet Alex Aixala, Chicago Canvass Director

Alex Aixala’s motivation to get involved in the campaign to defeat Bush started halfway around the world teaching English in Osaka, Japan, during the 2002 US march to war on Iraq. He was adamantly against the war, but he didn’t have a place to direct his objection. The only protests were occurring four hours away in Tokyo, and discussions were limited by the fact that the word “protest” doesn’t even exist in the Japanese vocabulary.

When Alex returned to the States, he implemented his ambitions to be the facilitator of change through theater and public education. He taught in the Chicago public school system and worked backstage on several theater productions, including the Pulitzer Prize winning play “Anna in the Tropics.”

Alex was starting to feel too removed from making true change when he ran across the Grassroots Campaigns job posting on Craig’s List in early April. His varied experiences from working abroad to teaching children made him a perfect candidate for GCI, but he didn’t really know what he was getting himself into! “I had a sense of, well, fundraising, but the interviewers seemed so excited and motivated, I thought whatever, it couldn’t be so bad.”

Alex grew up in Miami, Florida as a part of the Cuban-American community. He received his Masters in Theater from Brown University in 2002. Alex views his Grassroots Campaigns experience as amazing. He describes his peers as a great group of enthusiastic young people. Alex has been based in our outreach office in Chicago, IL.