NTanya Lee, Executive Director
E-mail: nlee@colemanadvocates.org
NTanya began her lifelong commitment to social justice as a Black 13 year old free lunch kid fighting against Ronald Reagan’s “ketchup is a vegetable” policy. Over the last twenty-five years, she has become a veteran organizer, policy advocate and movement-builder. She is respected nationally for her leadership in transitioning Coleman Advocates from a uniquely successful child advocacy organization to a 'hybrid' member-led organizing powerhouse. She is a dynamic 'next generation' nonprofit leader of color with a background in policy analysis and advocacy, student organizing and youth work, community history, grassroots electoral campaigns, and progressive alliance building in the complex landscape of American urban politics.
NTanya became Executive Director in January, 2005, following Coleman's longtime leader, Margaret Brodkin.
Since the launch of Coleman's Five Year Strategic Plan in 2007, she has guided the organization through a new era of community-led victories, including:
• building a new membership base of 500 youth and parents and a powerful core of African American and Latino leaders, representing struggling families in San Francisco's poor and working class communities of color.
• building a new, bottom-up policy agenda that addresses the root causes of the dramatic decline of children in San Francisco, including the lack of affordable housing, quality education for students of color, and equitable economic opportunities for families in poverty.
• winning a member-led grassroots budget campaign in 2006 that invested $10 million in new local dollars for rental assistance, subsidized childcare, violence prevention and job training services for low-income families.
• winning a member-led campaign to pass the A-G/College & Career for All policy at the school district in May 2009, which will finally provide all students of color with access to the college-path courses required for admission to any state of California college.
• launching the Grassroots Leadership Institute in 2009, deepening the organization's leadership development program.
NTanya won the San Francisco Bay Guardian "Local Hero" award in 2007, the CLAER Project's "Visionary Award" in 2005, and the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club's "Community Service Award" in 2008. She is a sought-after speaker at both community actions and at ‘expert’ panels, including engagements at the Northern California Loan Fund, the Summer Search national alumni summit, the Surdna Foundation, Hazen Foundation and Haas Jr. Foundation Board of Trustees, Grantmakers for Children, and the Northwest Federation of Community Organizations. For NTanya's article on Coleman's thirty years of evolving strategies for social change, published in the journal New Directions in Youth Development go here: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/117951586/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0
Prior to becoming Executive Director, NTanya was the Project Director of Coleman Advocates’ youth organizing project, Youth Making a Change, for four years. She was also Coleman’s lead staff person on youth and juvenile justice policy advocacy. She has held multiple leadership positions in nonprofit and grassroots community organizations, including Youth Empowerment Coordinator of the San Francisco Youth Commission, Street Outreach Director at Ozone House for youth (MI), Education Policy Advocate at the Community Service Society (NYC), organizer with People About Changing Education (NYC) and Black AIDS Mobilization (NYC).
Education: NTanya received her undergraduate degree at Brown University in American Studies & Public Policy, and did doctoral work in American Studies/African American History at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. She attended public schools in Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, Michigan, Delaware and Connecticut.
Personal: NTanya is the daughter of Deborah Gibson, an artist, public housing resident organizer and mental health advocate in Michigan, and Forrester Lee, a cardiologist and Asst Dean of Multicultural Affairs at the Yale University School of Medicine. NTanya lives with her partner Ayoka and son Khalil in San Francisco’s Portola neighborhood, on the city’s southeast side.