Sherece West-Scantlebury is nationally known for her leadership in the areas of community development, public policy, and, most recently, disaster recovery. Sherece’s career path began at the Social Security Administration and wound its way through the Maryland Municipal League, the DC Department of Public Health, the Community Service Society of New York City, the Ford Foundation, and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.
At Casey, Sherece partnered with its Rebuilding Communities Initiative grantees and consultants to help the five RCI sites advance their community-building plans and achieve their goals, and former President/CEO of the Carrier Foundation.
Sherece holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Public Policy from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy; and a Bachelor of Arts from Bowie State University. She was a Fellow with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Policy Institutes and a 2003–04 Emerging Leaders Fellow – a joint program of Duke University and the University of Cape Town in South Africa.
In addition to heading WRF, she currently serves on the boards of the Council on Foundations, Grantmakers for Children, Youth and Families, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy and the National Urban Fellows.
She is an adjunct professor at the University of Arkansas Little Rock. While with the Center on Community Philanthropy, Dr. Sherece West-Scantlebury presented a paper on moving the needle one family at a time.