I have 25+ years experience in social justice and political organizations across the non-profit, political, philanthropic, government, and academic sectors with a focus on women and girls. My previous senior leadership positions as Chief Operating Officer for Emerge America, Majority Council Director for EMILY’s List, and Executive Director of GirlSource all informed my passion and expertise in the arena of gender parity in political leadership. In 2010, I founded IGNITE, a nationally recognized 501c3 that is building a movement of young women who are ready and eager to become the next generation of political leaders. Under my leadership IGNITE grew from a small start up with zero revenues to the largest and most diverse young women’s political leadership program in the United States, training 10,000+ young women a year across 40 states. Before I left IGNITE in 2021, the organization was selected from a pool of 600+ applicants as a winner of Equality Can’t Wait, a competition funded by Melinda Gates, Mackenzie Scott and the Schusterman Family Foundation.Throughout my career I have worked as an independent consultant in the non-profit sector, with political, advocacy, philanthropic and 501c3 organizations across a variety of issue areas. In that capacity I help organizations develop strategies to expand their footprints, attract new funding and implement ways to assess impact.I am also a skilled researcher, having served as Principal Investigator on federal, state, and local evaluations regarding the effectiveness and impact of welfare reform, California’s Child Health Insurance Program, and General Assistance on low-income individuals and communities and working with federal, state, and local agencies to implement recommended policies resulting from evaluation findings. I have appeared on CNN, NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox News and my work has been featured in the New York Times, LA Times, The Hill, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Vox, Bustle, Refinery 29 as well as numerous international and domestic articles on women and leadership. I hold a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, an MSW from New York University, and a B.A. from Middlebury College. I live with my family in San Francisco, California.