Sondra Samuels
Sondra Samuels is the Co-founder, President & CEO of the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ). In partnership with parents, students, non-profits, schools, and staff, Sondra is leading a revolutionary culture shift in North Minneapolis that is focused on creating generational wealth through education, family stability, and racial equity. The NAZ Collaborative, made up of more than 30 partner nonprofits and schools, is working toward a single goal — to support and prepare low-income North Minneapolis children of color to succeed in school, college, career, and life. NAZ continues to scale up to serve more students and families while turning the social service model on its head and leading the creation of a college-bound culture across the community.
Ms. Samuels is a 29-year resident of North Minneapolis and a national leader committed to comprehensive placed-based solutions and anti-racist results-based accountability. She and her team work tirelessly to ensure the integration of effective cradle-to-career solutions across the NAZ Collaborative, to scale and sustain results across North Minneapolis, and to achieve the systems and policy changes needed for families and scholars to truly share in the prosperity of the Twin Cities Region. Under her leadership, NAZ was named a federal Promise Neighborhood, achieved membership status of the StriveTogether Network, and has become a nationally recognized model for comprehensive place-based solutions for community transformation and systems change.
Sondra co-founded the country’s first statewide placed-based coalition, the Education Partnership Coalition, composed of nine place-based, cradle-to-career organizations across Minnesota, which has secured over $36M in state funding over a 10-year period to collectively support over 100,000 students in achieving academic and life success. She also serves on the Minneapolis Federal Reserve’s Inclusion Advisory Board, the Leadership Team of Generation Next, and the Great MN Schools Board of Directors.
Sondra graduated from two historically Black Universities, receiving a B.S. degree from Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD, and an MBA from Clark Atlanta University in Atlanta, GA.