Join us as we host our next student of the month, Erika Barnes-Ford, who is one of our doctoral students at Pepperdine University Graduate School of Education and Psychology.

A little bit about her:

Erika Barnes Ford is a Political Strategist based in Roswell, Georgia. Her firm, The Candidates Coach, a subsidiary of Southern Solutions, LLC - which provides project management, business consulting, and political strategy - is a full-service campaign management and consulting agency focused on candidate development, recruitment, and messaging. Ms. Barnes Ford's experience includes process improvement and strategic planning in municipal and nonprofit management, legislative development, advocacy, and contracting. Active in a wide variety of community and political affairs for nearly three decades, her emphasis has focused on quality-of-life issues, including creative public policy, social justice reform, and working to change historical narratives and biases. Erika presently serves on the Executive Boards of several organizations, including the Mack Henry Brown Remembrance Coalition in collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative, the Forward Together Foundation and The Humanity Group both focused on DEIB training and development, and the North Fulton NAACP, where she is the recently elected Branch President representing the six cities of North Metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. Erika is a Woodruff Scholar Graduate of Agnes Scott College with a BA in History/ Africana Studies. She earned her Master of Public Administration at Troy University (Alabama) and is presently in the dissertation process at Pepperdine University's Graduate School of Education and Psychology in the Global Leadership and Change Ph.D. Program. Her research emphasis includes understanding the impacts of barriers to the electability of Black women to political office, benefits of inclusive and empathetic leadership, mitigating racial bias, and social justice inclusive K-12 curriculum development, as well as an interest in immigration policy reform. She has resided in Roswell since 2014.