As Program Director for Human Capital Strategy, Amanda designs and implements a citywide strategy for moving thousands of Chicago residents toward completing a high school diploma and a post-secondary credential. She plans, directs and coordinates all aspects of CWIC’s human capital programs, including CWIC’s Complete the Degree and Literacy-to-Work initiatives.

Amanda was previously a Program Officer in the Communities Program at the McCormick Foundation where she directed the strategy for annual investments in workforce development programs that serve hard-to-employ populations. She was also the 2004 J. Ira and Nicki Harris Fellow at the Chicago Community Trust.  Amanda has years of community organizing experience working with constituents to increase public resources available for healthcare and human services and educating elected officials on the impact of public programs.  As a union organizer she built alliances across manufacturing, service sector and building trades unions and engaged community organizations in workers’ rights campaigns in Boston, Massachusetts and Portland, Oregon. She was a Harvard University Trade Union Fellow in 2000.

Amanda holds a master’s degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy and a bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Third World Studies from Oberlin College.  In 2005, she served as an intern in the office of then-Senator Barack Obama.

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