Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder in Residence, started PolicyLink in 1999. Under Ms. Blackwell’s leadership, PolicyLink gained national prominence 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, and infrastructure.

Prior to founding PolicyLink, Ms. Blackwell served as Senior VP at the Rockefeller Foundation. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Urban Strategies Council. From 1977 to 1987, Ms. Blackwell was a partner at Public Advocates. She is the co-author of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future, and she authored “The Curb Cut Effect”, published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in 2017.

As a leading voice in the movement for equity in America, Ms. Blackwell serves on numerous boards, and she advised the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve as one of 15 members of its inaugural Community Advisory Council. She is the 2018 recipient of the John W. Gardner Leadership Award, presented by the Independent Sector, and in 2017, she received the Peter E. Haas Public Service Award from the University of California, Berkeley.