June 29, 2020
For Immediate Release
For more information, contact Gillian Asido, Manager & Office of President & CEO

PolicyLink is strengthening its capacity to ensure that all people in America — particularly those who face the burdens of structural racism — participate in a just society, live in a healthy community of opportunity, and prosper in an equitable economy.

I am honored to introduce Ashleigh Gardere, who will join PolicyLink on July 1, as Senior Advisor to the President and CEO, and the Director of the All-In Cities initiative. I am also pleased to promote Amanda Maria Navarro to Chief Impact Officer, and Sarah Treuhaft to Vice President of Research.

Ashleigh Gardere will work closely with the President and CEO to promote and support the development of a shared national equity agenda. As Senior Adviser to the President and CEO and Director of the All-In Cities initiative, she will scale our impact in cities by expanding and deepening place-based partnerships, sharing liberating innovations, and working in transformative solidarity with local leaders to achieve policy wins. Ashleigh will also bring her incomparable vision and leadership to advancing our Winning on Equity strategy — an effort to ensure the concept of equity retains its power and potency and does not become watered down. She will play a leadership role in turning movement leaders’ eyes toward implementing a campaign that finally frees democracy from the oppressive blend of racism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

Most recently, Ashleigh served as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the New Orleans Business Alliance, the city’s economic development agency. She previously led a citywide Economic Opportunity Strategy as a Senior Advisor to former mayor Mitch Landrieu. Recognized by Living Cities as one of the nation’s “Top 25 Disruptive Leaders” working to close racial opportunity gaps, Ashleigh is an expert in economic and workforce development, organizational leadership and culture change, and large-scale systems transformation. She holds a bachelor’s degree in urban studies from New York University and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Amanda Maria Navarro has been promoted to the newly created position of Chief Impact Officer. Working closely with the President and CEO and COO, Amanda will help shape the organization’s strategic direction to maximize impact and drive innovative results-based efforts. In this new role, Amanda will bring significant experience and a visionary and collaborative leadership style to further advance and accelerate the organization’s impact strategy. Amanda will drive scale and impact by fostering alignment across programmatic functions, measuring outcomes of the organization’s engagements and partnerships, and disseminating lessons being learned from our work across the country. She will continue to direct the national Convergence Partnership, as well as provide strategic guidance on national philanthropic initiatives.

Since joining PolicyLink in 2009, Amanda has worked closely with philanthropic institutions and government agencies, and trained hundreds of diverse leaders and constituencies across the country on a range of strategies to advance racial and health equity. In that time, Amanda has helped shape several signature federal programs to benefit healthy people living in healthy places. These efforts include the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Community Transformation Grants, and Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) program. Amanda has also managed a national network of over 70 philanthropic and health-care institutions that supported hundreds of equitable policy and systems change wins in 42 cities, states, and regions across the country.

Before joining PolicyLink, she worked at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coordinating several programmatic and research activities related to racial and ethnic health inequities, social determinants of health, and community health promotion. She holds a master of public health from Boston University and a doctor of public health from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health.

Sarah Treuhaft, as Vice President of Research, will develop a research agenda to support PolicyLink policy priorities, oversee research across the organization, and expand our research partnerships. Building out PolicyLink tools and resources that equip grassroots advocates and civic leaders with relevant data and research to bolster their local campaigns is a key priority. She will continue to oversee the development of our Equitable Economy portfolio, including our National Equity Atlas partnership with the USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE).

Since joining PolicyLink in 2004, Sarah has played a key role in many of our programmatic efforts, including creating the National Equity Atlas — the nation’s most robust report card on racial equity metrics in our cities and regions — and developing our “Equity as the Superior Growth Model” framework describing how racial equity is a moral and economic imperative. These efforts have significantly shaped policy conversations on racial inequality in America.

She launched the All-In Cities initiative, the Jobs for All campaign, and the Bay Area Equity Atlas and has led numerous partnerships with grassroots advocates, academics, and national organizations to use data to advance policies to achieve racial and economic equity. Sarah has written for publications including The New York Times, Shelterforce, and Yes! Magazine. She holds master's degrees in city planning and international and area studies from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a part of the UCLA Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network.

Looking forward to working in partnership,