JaNay Queen Nazaire

JaNay Queen Nazaire is a facilitator, collaborator, and bridge-builder with a fierce belief that every person has the right to a healthy, abundant, and connected life.

As Senior Advisor at Living Cities, Dr. Queen convenes and leverages public, private, and philanthropic stakeholders in American cities, identifies and tests innovative approaches to deploy millions in public and private capital for investing in people of color, and harnesses and facilitates the power and resources of 18 multibillion-dollar foundations and financial institutions working collectively towards systems change. In her role, she developed the organizational framework and theory of change to direct Living Cities’ portfolio and focus its partnerships and programs on closing racial gaps in income and wealth so that all people in U.S. cities are economically secure and building wealth. Additionally, Dr. Queen provides oversight for programs and ensures resource alignment, manages board relationships, builds and maintains external partnerships, and measures organizational progress and outcomes for improvement, learning, replication, and/or scalability. Throughout her career, Dr. Queen has worked across sectors, at every level of government, domestically, and internationally to provide innovative, creative, and solution-focused leadership and strategy to address social and economic challenges for children, adults, families, and communities.

Dr. Queen is grateful for her experience and the opportunity to work on outcomes for children, adults, families, and communities in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors; as well as in academia, having taught Leadership in Public Policy at UMD, and continuing to serve as faculty for the Health Leadership Fellows sponsored by the Health Foundation of Western and Central New York.

Her passion is in building relationships and leveraging networks to empower and mobilize leaders across the globe, as they advocate for people who have been disproportionately left out and systematically denied social, political and economic opportunity.