Angela Glover Blackwell

Angela Glover Blackwell is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Public Service at the NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service and the Founder and CEO of PolicyLink. Founded in 1999, PolicyLink has become a leading voice in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, education, and infrastructure.

Blackwell previously served as Senior Vice President at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she oversaw the foundation’s domestic and cultural divisions. 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. She currently serves on President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.

Blackwell is the co-author of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future and contributed to Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream and The Covenant with Black America. In 2013, Blackwell and PolicyLink collaborated with the Center for American Progress to write and release All In Nation: An America that Works for All.

Blackwell earned a B.A. from Howard University and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.