Bios
Melanie L. Campbell is the Executive Director and CEO of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation. Ms. Campbell has over 20 years of experience as a civic leader, public administrator, political strategist, civil rights and youth advocate. One of her most rewarding accomplishments at the National Coalition has been creating an innovative, youth-focused leadership development program, Black Youth Vote! (BYV), for which she received the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Emerging Leaders Legacy Award in June 2003.
She is a nationally recognized expert on black civic participation, election reform, voting rights and coalition building. Highly successful coalition projects enacted under her leadership include the VOTE Election Reform Task Force in 2001, Unity Civic Engagement & Voter Empowerment Campaign; and most recently, the ReBuild Hope NOW coalition to assist survivors of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in rebuilding their lives in the Gulf Coast.
Ms. Campbell was a resident fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government’s Institute of Politics at Harvard University in spring 2003. She is a contributing writer in the recently released 2006 Harvard University Journal on African Americans in Public Policy, “A Nation Exposed: Rebuilding African American Communities.” She also contributed to the publication’s 2004 edition, “Politics & Progress: A Presidential Platform for 2004.” She was featured in the July 2003 Black Enterprise Magazine article on Black Leadership: The Next Generation.
Ms. Campbell serves on the board of the Black Leadership Forum, a confederation of the leaders of the 21 top African American civil rights and service organizations. In 2000, she was recognized as one of Washington D.C.’s “Top 40 Under 40 Emerging Leaders.” She holds a B.A. in Business Administration and Finance from Clark Atlanta University. She is a charter member of FUTURE PAC, a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, SCLC W.O.M.E.N., NCNW, NAACP, Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and the National Association of Female Executives.
