Leila McDowell
Managing Director, Communications
lmcdowell@advancementproject.org
Leila McDowell is an innovative strategic communications professional with a proven track record of success in developing campaigns to impact the national debate, advance new social change narratives, affect policy change and achieve legislative and legal victories.
McDowell comes to Advancement Project with over 20 years of experience in using her extensive communications and public relations skills to build the power and impact of progressive organizations. She is co-founder and former vice president of McKinney & McDowell Associates, currently McKinney & Associates, a successful public relations firm devoted to social change issues. She has worked with numerous grassroots, nonprofit and labor clients. McDowell is well-known for her development of the strategic communications campaign that helped compel the world’s largest pork processing plant to allow a free and fair process for a union vote resulting in the largest victory in the history of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Most recently, she served as Vice President for Communications at the NAACP.
McDowell is a former broadcast reporter with several ABC affiliates and a former radio personality with WHUR-FM and WKYS-FM in Washington, DC. She studied communications and film and television production and earned her BFA at New York University.
Filed under Staff, Voter Protection, Quality Education, Schoolhouse to Jailhouse, Immigrant Justice, Redistricting, Inclusive Development
