Sheri Brady serves as the Vice President and Chief Program Officer at the Children’s Defense Fund. In this role, she guides the organization’s programmatic work, ensuring that CDF’s efforts in policy advocacy, service delivery, and movement building are aligned to realize CDF’s vision of a nation where marginalized children flourish, leaders prioritize their well-being, and communities wield the power to ensure they thrive.
Prior to joining CDF, Sheri was Director of Strategic Partnerships at the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, managing an emerging and expanding body of work focused on supporting community power-building and equity in collaborative policy making, including collective impact. This included overseeing key partnerships focused on building philanthropic field practices around community-centered grantmaking. Past roles include Director of Policy at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where she provided foundation-wide leadership on policy and advocacy grantmaking; and Senior Policy Fellow at Voices for America’s Children where she managed a policy portfolio and provided technical training to member organizations to strengthen their advocacy on the status of children and the need for increased investments.
She serves on the boards of Generations United improving the lives of children, youth, and older people through intergenerational collaboration; Diverse City Fund, a local fund supporting the visions of people of the global majority in DC to realize liberation, build power, spark solutions and create social change; and Women’s Equity Center and Action Network providing provide women of color with tools and resources to facilitate their engagement in the policymaking that affects their daily lives.
She earned her BA in Political Science from Wheaton College in Norton, MA and her JD from the University of California at Berkeley Law School.
