SPEAKERS
Amanda Cage, President & CEO, National Fund for Workforce Solutions
Amanda Cage is the president and CEO of the National Fund for Workforce Solutions. Amanda joined the National Fund in March 2020, bringing more than 25 years of federal workforce system, grantmaking, and organized labor experience to the organization. Throughout her career, Amanda has focused on ensuring economic inclusion and stability for workers and their families. Most recently, she served as the chief program officer at the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership. There she managed a $70 million portfolio of public and private funding and a network of over 50 agencies for the country’s second largest workforce system. Before that, Amanda served as director of human capital strategy for the Chicago Workforce Investment Council, where she led a citywide effort to increase Chicago’s competitiveness in a knowledge-based global economy. For five years, she led the workforce development portfolio at the McCormick Foundation, and she was the 2004 J. Ira & Nicki Harris Foundation Fellow at the Chicago Community Trust. Amanda started her career as a labor organizer working for Jobs with Justice and the Service Employees International Union and was a Trade Union Program Fellow at Harvard Law School. She is an Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program 2017-2018 Job Quality Fellow and a 2019 Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow. Amanda earned a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a master’s degree in public policy from the Harris School at the University of Chicago.
Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder in Residence, PolicyLink
Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder in Residence, started the organization in 1999 with a mission of advancing racial and economic equity for all. Through her writing, speaking, and leadership, Angela has helped to grow and define a national equity movement focused on innovating and improving public policy with a wide range of partners to ensure access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color – particularly in the areas of building an equitable economy, health, housing, transportation, infrastructure, and arts and culture. Prior to founding PolicyLink, Angela served as Senior Vice President at the Rockefeller Foundation, where she oversaw the foundation’s Domestic and Cultural programs. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Oakland (CA) Urban Strategies Council, where she pioneered new approaches to neighborhood revitalization. From 1977 to 1987, she was a partner at Public Advocates, a nationally known public interest law firm. She is also the host of the recently launched podcast, Radical Imagination.
As a leading voice in the movement for equity in America, Angela is a frequent commentator for some of the nation’s top news organizations, including The New York Times, HuffPost, Washington Post, Salon, and CNN, and was most recently published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She has appeared regularly on such programs as public radio’s Marketplace, The Tavis Smiley Show, Nightline, and PBS’s Now. Angela has also been a guest on the PBS series Moyers & Company and PBS’s NewsHour. She appeared in the sixth and final segment of the PBS six-part series The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and in Bob Herbert’s Chasing the Dream: The Fight for A Black Middle Class.
Angela 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. A co-author of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future (W.W. Norton & Co., 2010), Angela also contributed to What It’s Worth: Strengthening the Financial Future of Families, Communities and the Nation (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and CFED, 2015), Worlds Apart: Poverty and Politics in Rural America (Yale University Press, 2014, second edition), and Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream (The New Press, 2007), among others. In 2013, Angela and PolicyLink collaborated with the Center for American Progress to produce All-In Nation: An America that Works for All.
Angela serves on numerous boards, including the Children’s Defense Fund, the W. Haywood Burns Institute, the U.S. Water Alliance, Pitzer College, and FSG. She also advises the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve as one of the 15 members of its Community Advisory Council. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, and a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
Monique Baptiste, Vice President, Global Philanthropy | Jobs & Skills, Corporate Responsibility, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Monique Baptiste joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. in early 2019 as Vice President of Global Philanthropy. As part of this work, Monique supports JPMC’s $350 million global investment in education and workforce training systems to promote economic opportunity and reduce inequities in labor market outcomes from groups that have historically faced significant barriers to accessing opportunity. This includes leading efforts to promote second chance hiring opportunities for individuals with criminal backgrounds in key cities across the country.
With a background in urban policy and economics, Monique has worked in the field of workforce development for over a decade. Prior to joining JPMorgan Chase, Monique served as Vice President of Programs at the Newark Alliance and Director of the Greater Newark Workforce Funders Collaborative, where she was responsible for connecting private philanthropy to innovative workforce development initiatives targeting low-income workers. In 2008, Monique ran one of the largest workforce readiness and training organizations in New Jersey, serving more than 500 low-income residents annually from throughout northern New Jersey, including a nationally affiliated YouthBuild program serving opportunity youth.
Monique’s service to urban communities also extends deeply into economic development. In 2004, Monique served as the Deputy Director of the Community Economic Development Division of La Casa De Don Pedro—a comprehensive non-profit in Newark, NJ, and has also served as a consultant to a number of local governments and public school districts to assist with securing resources to complete both human services and infrastructure projects to improve quality of life for communities.
Monique has an undergraduate degree in economics and political science and a graduate degree in public policy from Rutgers University.
Twitter Handle: @MoniqueBNJ
This work is generously supported by
