Kimberly Ellis is a prominent San Francisco Bay Area activist who has helped shape the landscape of progressive and grassroots politics in California and beyond. After running national operations at Emerge America, in 2010, Kimberly was tapped to lead the flagship affiliate, Emerge California, as its Executive Director. For nearly a decade, Kimberly led the organization with incredible success, growing what had been a regional training program into a statewide electoral powerhouse for women, earning her the reputation for revolutionizing Democratic politics in the Golden State. In 2002, former Vice President Kamala Harris was the inspiration for the creation of Emerge California; today, Emerge alumnae have occupied seats from White House Cabinet Secretaries to Congress, Governorships to Attorneys General, and everything in between.
Most recently, Kimberly served as the Director for the San Francisco Department on the Status of Women where she worked at the intersection of health, safety, socioeconomics, politics and gender to reorganize and reimagine the country’s oldest Commission and Department on the Status of Women to meet the realities of a post-Roe America. Under her leadership, the Department doubled in size, tripled its budget through external grants, and expanded the organization’s visibility, brand and impact through initiatives like the Bay Area Abortion Rights Coalition (BAARC), a multi-regional collective of municipal and county governments and reproductive healthcare experts and advocates, and Shift Happens, a 700-person women’s policy summit to empower women, girls and nonbinary people with the education, tools and resources they need to create opportunities, build pathways to healthy and prosperous futures and thrive.
While in Cambridge, Kimberly is seeking to transition her focus from electoral politics to the politics of economic behaviour and conscious consumerism. She will explore how people can leverage, harness and direct their purchasing power through everyday economic decisions to help shape better futures and a fairer society for all.
