Who are the CFT's officers?

• Marty Hittelman was elected CFT President in 2007. Before his election he served as CFT's Senior Vice-President, and also led the CFT's Community College Council, which represents community college faculty and classified employees. Hittelman formerly led the faculty union of the Los Angeles Community College District, AFT College Guild, Local 1521. Hittelman has served on many legislative task forces and is a past member of the statewide Community College Academic Senate Executive Committee. He was a high school teacher before teaching math at Los Angeles Valley College.
• Mary Alice Callahan, an elementary and middle school teacher for 24 years, is a Senior Vice President of CFT. Callahan, former president of the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers, AFT Local 2022, sits on the AFT Program & Policy Councils for Pre-K and K-12 teachers and is studying education policy analysis in a doctoral program at UC Berkeley.
• Dennis Smith serves as CFT Secretary-Treasurer, elected in 2007. He has served as President of the Los Rios Community College Federation of Teachers, Local 2279, and as the statewide President of the Faculty Association for California Community Colleges (FACCC). He is a Business and Accounting professor.
• Velma Butler is president of the CFT Council of Classified Employees, the division of support staff and paraprofessionals. Butler leads the AFT College Staff Guild, Local 1521A, representing clerical technical employees in the Los Angeles Community College District and worked as an athletic secretary for 17 years at Southwest College.
• Gary Ravani, a middle school teacher for 31 years in Petaluma, heads the Early Childhood/K-12 Council.  Ravani served as president of the Petaluma Federation of Teachers for 19 years, has been a vice-president of CFT for two decades and is chair of the Educational Issues Committee.
• Bob Samuels, a lecturer in the Writing Program at UCLA, leads the CFT's University Council, which represents the librarian and lecturer bargaining units in the University of California system.
• Carl Friedlander is the president of the CFT Community College Council. He is a long-time faculty member in the Los Angeles Community College District, and president of the Los Angeles College Faculty Guild, AFT Local 1521.

WHO WE ARE
We are education employees working at every level of California education, from Head Start to the University of California. We are mostly in public schools, but you can find us in dozens of private schools and universities, too. We find common ground in our commitment to education and by participating together in the statewide California Federation of Teachers. The CFT is your professional union.

We come together to act-on behalf of education workplace rights, academic freedom, legislative solutions to educational policy issues, and full access to quality public education for our students. We encourage every member to be an active member. The union should never be understood as somehow other than or outside of ourselves. Your activism is the key to our power as professionals.

AFFILIATIONS
The CFT is the statewide organization of local unions of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). Every AFT local in California is affiliated with the national AFT, the statewide CFT and with the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO). Portions of our dues dollars (the amounts determined democratically through your vote in local, statewide and national meetings) underwrites the activities of our affiliated groups.

While these affiliations may at first seem distant from your campus or worksite, each represents a level of support for your own activities at work and in defense of your rights. Our locals in California can call upon affiliates for assistance in political or legislative action, for research during negotiations, to add their members' voices to ours in demonstrations, and for ongoing training in the skills and knowledge necessary to run a strong, active, democratic union-all of which ultimately allows us to run our work lives in a more professional manner.