Yumeka Rushing

Yumeka Rushing serves as Chief Strategy Officer (CSO).

Yumeka serves on the executive leadership team providing leadership and oversight for the execution of program efforts, program strategies, and advancing the Association's public policy agenda. She has primary responsibility for strategy and integration through all levels of the Association. Her team includes ACT-SO, Criminal Justice, Economics, Education, Environmental Climate Justice, Health, and the NextGen programs.

Most recently, Yumeka advised mission-driven organizations as Founder and Chief Strategist at Social Impact Agenda. Early in her career she worked as a litigator and later served as Advocacy Director at the Mississippi Center for Justice, a public interest law firm advancing racial and economic justice. In the wake of large-scale disasters, Yumeka served as Gulf Coast Policy Advisor for Oxfam America. She is a former program officer and lead for strategic programming at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Southern Regional Office, where she leveraged the foundation's assets to foster transformative change for children.

Yumeka is an alumna of the prestigious MIT Community Innovators Mel King Fellowship. She is an active member of the board of the Mississippi Children's Foundation and Operation Shoestring. She has an undergraduate degree from Spelman College, a master's degree in publishing from Pace University, and holds a Juris Doctorate from Cumberland School of Law at Samford University.