University of California, Irvine

Texas Tech University

Managing Consultant at Cities & People Advisors

San Francisco, California, United States

Laurie Jones Neighbors Consulting is now Cities & People Advisors. We work with organizations to ensure that those historically and currently barred from meaningful public decision making have the power to make decisions for their cities and neighborhoods, and that they do so in numbers that transcend the notion of “equal representation” in order to end oppression and achieve racial, economic, environmental, and gender equity.

Cities & People Advisors

Managing Principal

Appointed by the Board of Supervisors, the Task Force ensures the deliberations of boards, commissions, councils, and agencies of the City and County are conducted before the people, and that City operations are open to the people's review. The Task Force conducts public hearings, issues Orders of Determination, and makes referrals to municipal offices with enforcement power under the San Francisco Sunshine Ordinance, under the California Open Records Act, and under the Brown Act.

City and County of San Francisco

Member, Sunshine Ordinance Task Force

Committee for Green Foothills protects open space, farmland, and natural resources in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties for the benefit of all through advocacy, education, and grassroots action, envisioning a resilient region where wildlife thrive, everyone has natural beauty to enjoy, and communities live in balance with nature.

Green Foothills

Advisory Board Member

TransForm promotes walkable communities with excellent transportation choices to connect people of all incomes to opportunity, keep California affordable, and help solve our climate crisis. With diverse partners, TransForm engages communities in planning, runs innovative programs, and wins policy change at the local, regional and state levels.

TransForm

Member, Board of Directors

In the Health Education Department at San Francisco State University, I have taught 20th Century US Health and Social Movements, a course that meets the university's American History requirement, and Structural Inequities in Public Health, a course that meets the university's upper-division social sciences requirement. As part of the Metro Academies, I also taught the first-year experience course (Education Justice, Health Equity, and Academic Success), as well as the second-year experience course (Health and Social Justice).

San Francisco State University

Adjunct Instructor, Health Education Department

As part of the Urban Habitat management team, I contributed to decision making for all aspects of the organization’s programmatic, personnel, and financial goals and strategies. I also led the strategic planning process to develop a clear, collaborative, values-driven plan that supports the organization in leveraging its technical and political capacity across programs.I provided oversight and strategic direction for Urban Habitat’s Bay Area strategic programs, with core responsibilities for continuing innovation in the Leadership Institute, Social Equity Caucus, and annual State of the Region conference, and I determined the replication strategy of the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute outside of the Bay Area, ensuring authentic and resourced transfer of the model to a variety of political contexts.

Urban Habitat

Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives

As Director of Education and Coalition Building, I managed all aspects of Urban Habitat’s Leadership Institutes, including the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute, and led planning for the replication of the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute at the state and national levels, including considerations such as pacing, saturation, and flexibility. I developed strategies to advance the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute from a program funded by general operating support to one fully funded by foundation grants, corporate giving, individual donors, and fee-for-service. I also shepherded the organization’s adoption of educational technology to enhance training and coalition building.For the Social Equity Caucus, a multi-sector, multi-issue coalition of Bay Area organizational members, I updated outcomes and success measures for engagement in successful coalition tactics in order to enhance the breadth and capacity of the coalition, and I managed the organization’s yearly State of the Region conference, ensuring that outreach and programming advanced Urban Habitat and Social Equity Caucus outcomes.As an example of my work with our core programs, I worked with the Richmond Equitable Development Initiative to determine plug-in points for community members in order to move equitable revisions to the city’s General Plan update.

Director of Education and Coalition Building

As Education and Training Coordinator at Urban Habitat, I supported the organization's overall priority programs and campaigns with leadership development activities and facilitation.I researched, developed, and piloted the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute, implementing the pilot on time and under budget and placing 100% of the pilot cohort in priority boards and commissions seats in the region. I designed and implemented curriculum, including in support of community engagement strategies, policy and decision-making processes, deliberation, and with technical content to support equitable decision making in public planning processes including transportation, land use, housing, jobs, and the environment.

Education and Training Coordinator

At the University of Oregon, I worked in both the Academic Skills Achievement Program and in the Teaching Effectiveness Program. In addition to my work supporting students, I designed and implemented cross-campus workshops on a variety of teaching, curriculum, educational technology, and administration issues, and I co-led a mandatory training for all faculty and staff of the College of Education to ensure accountability to student concerns about respect for a racially diverse student body. While at the Teaching Effectiveness Program, I authored content for a faculty-support web site, “Awakening Scholars: Student Learning in Undergraduate Learning Teams,” and worked with the university’s Interactive Media Group to determine appropriate, compelling site design.

University of Oregon

Instructor / Instructor Consultant

At CSU, I administered all aspects of a university-wide academic program enrolling approximately 700 students per  year in a mandatory course taught by faculty from across the disciplines. I also planned and delivered a teacher-training curriculum that addressed achieving outcomes, facilitating discussions, responding to student work, using portfolios, fostering climates of shared leadership and self-directed learning, and building learning communities.I coordinated, compiled, and distributed a program self-study, collecting and analyzing perspectives on program effectiveness from the campus community, comparing program issues to similar programs nationwide, and making recommendations to the administration and general campus community regarding structure, content, policies, and approaches. I designed and updated a progressive curriculum for diversity awareness and anti-oppression for use with a demographically diverse first-year student body. I worked with interdisciplinary faculty to build an innovative skills center at a new university by setting policies, developing programs, and determining appropriate pedagogy that allowed for the support and respect of all students.I developed special programming for under-prepared students, working closely with Migrant Education and Summer Bridge staff.

California State University, Monterey Bay

Program Coordinator / Interim Director

At MPC, I taught classes in the English Department and through the Lindamood Program.