Inella Ray

Inella Ray is an Institute for Success Planning Community of Practice intern. She is a passionate and vigorous advocate for children and youth. She believes in creating a world where children's and youth's futures are actively invested in, and their potential is systematically protected. She leverages experience from the out-of-school time space, systems-level and policy change, teacher recruitment, and youth development. Currently, she serves as the director of parent advocacy & engagement at Children First—a Pennsylvania political advocacy group advocating for children and youth by enacting systems-level and policy change that improves the lives and life chances of the region's children and youth.

At the Harvard Graduate School of Education, she is a part of the inaugural cohort of the Online Educational Leadership program, with a focus on PreK-12. Her focus is on learning about how to create and sustain change at the systems level across diverse settings, as well as how to use cross-sector collaboration as a pathway to address some of education's most pervasive problems. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated, and lovingly serves on two Philadelphia-based boards: Lift Every Voice Philly and The Philadelphia Orchard Project. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, stand-up comedy, traveling, and wonderous walking.