Libero Della Piana

Managing Director of Organizing and Strategic Partnership

Libero Della Piana is the Managing Director of Organizing and Strategic Partnership with the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). In this role, he identifies and leverages opportunities for movement-building, organizing, and coalition-building in support of DPA’s work to end the drug war and repair its harms.

Della Piana has taught and coached organizers nationwide, developed strategy and grassroots educational curricula, and helped lead successful issue campaigns to build power and change lives. He believes deeply in Ella Baker’s assertion that “oppressed people, whatever their level of formal education, have the ability to understand and interpret the world around them, to see the world for what it is, and move to transform it.” He has over thirty years of experience as an organizer, strategist, and social movement educator. He first became an organizer in high school in Salt Lake City, Utah, and has spent his life building grassroots power to fight for economic, social, and racial justice. His first job as an organizer was with DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equality) in Providence, Rhode Island, while attending Brown University.

Previously, Della Piana was the Senior Strategist with the Alliance for a Just Society and has worked at People’s Action and Race Forward. He graduated from the Center for Third World Organizing’s Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program (MAAP) and received the Bannerman Fellowship for Young Activists of Color. He received the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition’s Push for Excellence in Education Award.