Abel R. Cano

Abel Cano is Founder and ED of The Arc of Change, a Boston-based training initiative focused on harnessing the power of community organizing practices as a transformative craft for leadership and social impact. Abel is Dominican-American, raised in Boston, Honolulu and Indianapolis. As a leadership trainer and coach, Abel’s passion is to ignite breakthroughs that empower a rising generation of social movement leaders.

Abel Cano served as the Boston Field Organizer and Statewide Constituency Lead for Massachusetts in President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. Abel led the grassroots campaign to elect Boston’s first Asian-American woman to City Council At-Large as Field Director in 2013.

Abel is Co-Founder of the thriving arts non-profit, EMW: Art | Technology | Community in Cambridge. After years of organizing, Abel began teaching graduate level courses on leadership alongside legendary organizer Marshall Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Over the past 10+ years, Abel has organized in marginalized communities, served as an electoral campaign Field Director, trained and coached 1000’s of progressive leaders, and led 100’s of immersive workshops with the world’s leading universities and nonprofit organizations at the Harvard Kennedy School, Open Society Foundation, Harvard School of Public Health, National Health Service UK, Oxfam International, United Teen Empowerment Center, Brown University and 350.org among others.