After a remarkable career dedicated to social justice, faith-based organizing, and workers’ rights, Kim Bobo will retire on March 31, 2025, as Co-Executive Director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP) after almost a decade of service.
The Directors’ Legacy Fund honors Kim’s legacy by strengthening VICPP’S reserve funds to ensure sustainability, future growth, and innovation. The Fund will be launched with a $100,000 gift from Reverend Jim Payne’s four children in honor of their father who was the founding director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy. It will also include significant gifts from Kim, her children, the Board of Directors, and friends and supporters from across Virginia and beyond to celebrate her legacy.
A powerful force for justice, Kim served for almost a decade at VICPP, the state’s largest faith-based advocacy organization. During her tenure, she tripled the membership to a list of 20,000, including 750 different faith communities across the Commonwealth. Kim provided coalition leadership on major legislative campaigns including the expansion of Medicaid in 2018 (600,000 more people became eligible for health care), enacting bills to limit payday lending, curb wage theft, strengthen child labor laws, and pass historic legislation making Virginia the first state in the south to abolish the death penalty.
Kim’s impact extends far beyond Virginia. She founded and served as Executive Director of Interfaith Worker Justice in Chicago, where she spent 18 years building the nation’s largest faith-based network advocating for fair wages, benefits, and working conditions. She also served as the National Organizing Director for Bread for the World and trained hundreds of organizers and faith-based activists as a trainer with the Midwest Academy. In addition to leading legislative change, Kim is an influential author. She coined the term “wage theft” and has written extensively on labor justice in her books, Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid – And What We Can Do About It, Organizing for Social Change, Lives Matter: A Handbook for Christian Organizing, and The Worker Center Handbook.
Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to parents Melvin and Louise, Kim’s path to advocacy was shaped by her early faith experiences and education. She holds a B.A. in religion from Barnard College and an M.A. in economics from the New School for Social Research. While at Barnard, she met social justice leaders who inspired her lifelong mission to combine faith and activism.
Kim was married for 31 years to Stephen Coats, who died unexpectedly in 2013. They met at a training seminar with Bread for the World, and he was a labor rights advocate who focused on achieving better and safer conditions for workers throughout Central and South America. Together they raised twin sons, Benjamin and Eric, who have continued in their parents’ footsteps as organizers for justice. In 2017, Kim married David Duvall Orr, a long-time Chicago reform politician. She is passionate about many things, especially her family, helping those in need, mentoring young people, dancing, and shares a love of singing with her sister Martha. Kim spent 25 years as a choir director and when she moved to Richmond, joined the choir at Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church and a community choir, One Voice Chorus.
As Kim steps into her next chapter, we celebrate her extraordinary contributions and legacy. Her tireless work has paved the way for future generations of advocates, and while she may be stepping back from her role at VICPP, she will continue her passion for justice. In 2025, she will assist the Midwest Academy in updating the next edition of the Midwest Academy Organizing Manual. After that, she will see where God leaves her. We extend our deepest gratitude to Kim for her decades of service and wish her all the best in her new roles in the movement for justice.
Kim has been spiritually driven to do as much good for people as humanly possible. Her passion, enthusiasm, and leadership have inspired so many.”
- Frank A. McKinney III, former chair of the VICPP Board
Your gift to The Directors’ Legacy Fund will sustain Kim’s legacy by supporting economic, social, and racial justice advocacy work for future generations.
