Gihan Perera, Executive Director, co-founded the Miami Workers Center(MWC) together with Tony Romano in 1999. The Center is a dynamic organization which plays a leading role locally and nationally in the social justice movement. MWC uses a variety of strategies from community organizing, leadership development programs, strategic communications, electoral efforts, and coalition building to develop on-the-ground power in South Florida. The center has also become a national peer anchor to a number of strategic initiatives including the US Social Forum, the Right to the City Alliance, and a number of other efforts to build the theory, practice, and capacity of work happening at the intersection of race, gender, the economy, and the environment.

In early 2007, Gihan co-founded the Right to the City Alliance. RTTC is a growing national alliance which now has of over 50 grassroots organizations, legal service providers, academics and policy organizations in 8 cities. The alliance is utilizing the Right to the City frame to forge an urban human rights agenda to win racial justice, participatory democracy, and systemic policy and institutional change.

Through his successful organizing, writing and speaking, Gihan has become a nationally recognized progressive movement leader, organizer, and strategist. He frequently speaks at conferences and on the radio. He has been published and quoted in both local and national media outlets including the Miami Herald and TIME magazine. He began his activism as a student in high school in Los Angeles and then at UC Berkeley. While organizing against the first Gulf War, Perera hosted a radio program on a local station melding his passion for social and racial justice and music. Prior to founding the Center he was a union organizer, leading campaigns in Miami and South and North Carolina for seven years, with Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). He was also a trainer and west coast recruitment director for the AFL-CIO's Organizing Institute.

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