Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, founded PolicyLink in 1999. A renowned community building activist and advocate, Blackwell served as senior vice president of the Rockefeller Foundation where she oversaw the Foundation’s Domestic and Cultural divisions. Blackwell also developed Rockefeller’s Building Democracy division, which focused on race and policy, and created the Next Generation Leadership program. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (CA) Urban Strategies Council, where she pioneered new approaches to neighborhood revitalization. From 1977 to 1987, Blackwell was a partner at Public Advocates, a nationally known public interest law firm. She is the co-author of Searching for the Uncommon Common Ground: New Dimensions on Race in America (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002), and contributed to Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream (The New Press, 2007), an anthology edited by John Edwards. Blackwell earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, and a law degree from the University of California at Berkeley. She serves on numerous boards and co-chairs a task force on poverty for the Center for American Progress. (Click here to read the full bio.)

Judith Bell, President, oversees policy development, strategic planning, program implementation, and policy campaign strategy. She leads projects focused on equitable regional development policy to enhance the income and assets of the poor. Her portfolio includes the fair distribution of affordable housing throughout regions, equity in public investment and land use, and community strategies to reduce health disparities. She has supervised and engaged in extensive research and advocacy, particularly at the statewide level, and edited and written numerous reports on these topics. She is a regular speaker and trainer on advocacy and consults with organizations and leaders about strategy development and implementation. Her advocacy work with PolicyLink has included efforts to improve access to healthy foods, solutions to overcrowding in K-12 schools, and equitable approaches to infrastructure investment. Prior to joining PolicyLink, Bell was director of the West Coast regional office of Consumers Union, where she focused on changing public policies to promote greater access to health care, financial services, and low-cost auto insurance. Bell also developed and co-directed a 32-state project to preserve charitable assets as nonprofit health care institutions converted into for-profit businesses. The project’s work was instrumental in preserving more than $15 billion dollars of charitable funds, creating 125 new health care foundations in 35 states across the country, and changing applicable state laws.

Mildred Thompson, Senior Director and Director of the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place, leads the work of the organization’s health team, participates in research focused on understanding community factors that impact health disparities, and identifies practice and policy changes needed to improve individual, family, and community health. She has authored several reports and journal articles focused on reducing health disparities, increasing awareness about social determinants of health, and effective ways to impact policy change. Prior to joining PolicyLink, she was director of Community Health Services for Alameda County Public Health Department; director in Oakland for Healthy Start, a federal infant mortality reduction program; and director of San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center. Thompson has degrees in nursing and psychology and a graduate degree in social work from New York University. She has also taught at Mills College and San Francisco State University, and has worked as an organizational development consultant. Thompson speaks frequently on health and place issues and serves on several boards and commissions including The Zellerbach Family Foundation and The Institute of Medicine’s Health Disparities Roundtable.

Rubén Lizardo, Associate Director, leads equitable public investment efforts to ensure public investments in infrastructure generate community benefits including employment, small business opportunities, transportation access and quality, affordable housing, and socially just allocations of environmental costs and resources. His work includes research and public education to shed light on the implications of infrastructure investment; he also provides training and technical assistance to strengthen community and civic participation in decision-making, and works with public officials to develop investment strategies and policies that further equity and economic vitality. Prior to joining PolicyLink, he was the capacity building director of California Tomorrow, where he led advocacy, training, and technical assistance efforts to address diversity and equity issues in community colleges, K-12 education, after-school and youth development, community building, family resource centers, and philanthropy. He also served as director of the Community Planning and Economic Development Program at Los Angeles Trade Technical College. He is a former president of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission and was awarded The California Wellness Foundation’s California Peace Prize for his work to address root causes of youth violence. He currently serves on the boards of Californians for Justice and Justice Matters.

Sandra Whisler, Director of Finance and Operations for PolicyLink, oversees financial management, human relations, information technology, and facilities. She and her colleagues work to make PolicyLink a supportive, attractive, efficient, and fun place to work. Whisler comes to PolicyLink from CompuMentor, where she was first the launch director for www.techsoup.org and then vice president and managing director responsible for finance, human resources, IT, and facilities (during which time CompuMentor grew from 47 to 140 employees). Previously, she had a long career in academic publishing, including serving as Director of Electronic Publishing and associate director, Journals Division at the University of California Press and assistant director and director of Journals Marketing at the University of Chicago Press. She holds a degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

Dan Lavoie, Associate Director for Communications, helps guide media and outreach strategy at PolicyLink, working with our on-the-ground partners to spread the word and drive change. Prior to coming to PolicyLink, he reported for daily newspapers in Washington, DC, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Chicago. From the oak daises of the U.S. Capitol to the kitchen tables of families struggling to make ends meet, he has spent his career chronicling the legislative process and its impact on America’s working families.

Glenda Johnson, Associate Director for Communications, works closely with the PolicyLink communications staff to develop and implement targeted communications strategies designed to promote the image and identity of PolicyLink and its partner organizations, and to increase media coverage on issues around equitable development. As a New York Community Fellow with the Open Society Institute, she provided strategic communications consultancy to immigrant-serving organizations. She has over 10 years experience in print and interactive media. Johnson earned her bachelor’s degree in English literature from Spelman College and her master’s degree from Howard University.

Heather Tamir, Writer and Consultant to nonprofit and media groups. Previously, she worked in the communications office at PolicyLink, framing media messages for national and regional audiences and serving as the chief speechwriter to the founder and CEO. Between 1990 and 1999, Tamir worked at the Rockefeller Foundation, holding positions in international and U.S.-focused program areas. In the early part of her career, she worked as a journalist at Fairchild Publications.