Candidate for
Mayor; City of San Francisco

Amy's interdisciplinary and multi-sector professional experience as a researcher, educator, communications professional, public speaker, and strategic planning consultant has given her the tools she needs to inspire, engage, and lead San Francisco residents in co-creating an equitable, livable, and sustainable future for San Francisco. She has experience working in the fields of education, transitional housing, mental health, leadership development, HIV/AIDS prevention and support, sustainability, urban agriculture, medical cannabis, nonprofit consulting, civic engagement, and neighborhood development.

As a Bay Area native who has lived and worked in multiple cities and counties throughout the Bay Area, including San Jose, Oakland, and Berkeley, Amy has a unique perspective on regional collaboration and planning. Since moving to San Francisco in 2007, she has developed a vast inter-disciplinary, multi-sector, multi-generational, and multi-cultural network of city-wide neighbors. After graduating from SF State in 2010 with a self-designed M.A. in Organizational Development & Training that integrated the disciplines of Public Administration, Instructional Technologies, and Organizational Psychology, Amy initiated and co-developed an on-going, award-winning community service learning project in SF State's Public Administration Department that connects community-based nonprofits with graduate student support teams. She designed the SF CBO Support Project to support both non-profit community partners and students in their ability to apply tools of strategic planning, communications, and evaluation to their mission-serving programs.

Amy became activated in local politics in early 2011 when she joined her District 5 neighbors in organizing at City Hall against a Chase Bank that displaced two local businesses on Divisadero without due process of a Conditional Use Hearing through the Planning Department and Planning Commission. She learned about San Francisco's zoning laws, spoke at the Board of Appeals, Planning Commission, and public comment at the Board of Supervisors, and worked with neighbors and Supervisors to protect neighborhood culture and character by upholding and strengthening formula retail law. In late 2011, Amy founded Neighbors Developing Divisadero (NDDivis) and achieved nonprofit status at the state level along with the participation and support of neighbors and local neighborhood organizations, including Booker T. Washington Community Service Center. Amy launched a $3.6 million campaign to revitalize a blighted theater (the Harding Hive Campaign) with the support of over 500 neighbors and facilitated the collaboration of local entrepreneurs who placed a $4 million offer that would have activated the theater as a bookstore and multi-genre performance venue and culture center. Through NDDivis she re-activated and managed a long-dormant community garden in her neighborhood with the support of SF's urban agriculture network, hundreds of neighbors, and New Liberation Church.