Andrea Shorter | Director of Community Relations

Andrea Shorter brings over 30 years of experience to as an accomplished advocate, non-profit manager, public official, political strategist, and principal consultant with Atlas Leadership Strategies. Prior to coming on board, Andrea was the Director of Marriage Equality and Coalition Strategies at Equality California where she led an unprecedented statewide coalition of over 100 diverse organizations, community, political, and business leaders to restore same sex marriage equality after the passage of Proposition 8. She is the former Deputy Executive Director of the NAMES Project Foundation/AIDS Memorial Quilt where she developed its vast international chapters network, and developed initiatives to expand the historic Quilt’s reach as a key HIV/AIDS education tool into communities of color, middle schools, universities, and globally, including South Africa. As the former Deputy Executive Director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, she co-developed and directed what would become a nationally replicated program to provide alternatives to detention to non-violent youth offenders. The program was cited by the Department of Justice as a national model, and awarded by the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Excellence in Governance program.

Andrea is a former member of the elected Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Community College District, and the former Co-Chair of the San Francisco Counts Census Committee. She currently serves as ranking member and Vice-President of the Commission on the Status of Women for the City and County of San Francisco where she continues to lead nationally renowned policy and program initiatives regarding domestic violence, and gender equity in the workplace. Andrea is a proud graduate of Whittier College, and completed the Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s Executive Education Program for Senior Executives in State and Local Governmentas a 2009 David Bohnett Fellow for LGBT Leaders.