Abel R. Cano, MA
Leadership Faculty
Abel R. Cano is the Founder and ED of The Arc of Change. 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 first began organizing against youth violence in high school. He became a first-generation college graduate at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he led the largest Latinx student organization, Casa Latina. After graduating, Abel joined the Obama Campaign as a staff Field Organizer for Greater Boston and statewide constituency groups in 2012. He went on to lead campaigns to successfully elect first-time candidates of color to political office in Massachusetts as a Field Director. After years of organizing, Abel Cano taught graduate courses on leadership alongside legendary organizer Marshall Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He is a trained Community Dharma Mentor and Spiritual Director.
Abel holds a Masters in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Over the past 10+ years, Abel has organized in marginalized communities, co-founded a thriving arts nonprofit, served as Field Director on electoral campaigns, trained and coached thousands of progressive leaders, and led hundreds of immersive workshops with the world’s leading universities and nonprofit organizations.