Gina Acebo is the Network and Events Coordinator of the Applied Research Center. She received degrees in Political Science and Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and cut her teeth as a student organizer fighting for fair admissions for students of color. As a MAAP intern of the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO) in 1987, she worked with the Black Women's Health Project in Portland, OR and organized displaced Filipino senior citizens in the Bay Area. As one of the first participants of the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute, she worked with Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union in Virginia, Texas, Georgia, and Louisiana and returned to the West Coast to work as a full-time field organizer of Service Employees International Union organizing health care workers. From 1992-1999, Gina served as a senior organizer and trainer of CTWO and during her tenure she organized on issues of community development, police brutality, and gender equity in budgetary issues, as well as serving as one of the first organizers of Californians for Justice. In addition to organizing, Gina has served as a field researcher for the Consumer Union report The Thin Red Line: How The Poor Still Pay More. In 2000, she was awarded the La Fetra Foundation Fellowship to travel to Uganda to work on issues of reproductive health and freedom, and that led to her work on reproductive health and justice for low-income API communities in California. She has served on the boards of the Asian Pacific Environmental Network, California Peace Action, and the National Organizers' Alliance. 

Joining ARC in 2001, Gina worked on ARC’s response to post 9/11 racial discrimination by serving as the editor of the Reasserting Justice Toolkit and the Racing to War curriculum. She coordinated The Public Truth forums that exposed communities’ stories of how the “war on terrorism” and national security adversely affect the lives of immigrants, refugees, and communities of color and to raise awareness of the scope and scale of attack upon civil liberties and human rights. Currently she coordinates ARC’s Facing Race national conference on racial justice and helps organize Network trainings in the Western region.