Current IRL Fellow, Cohort 6 and Founder/Executive Director of Cara C. Pugh, Consulting LLC
Cara Pugh is dedicated to transforming circumstances of typically overlooked and underestimated communities. With her influential, charismatic, and healing presence, her magic is facilitating and co-creating high expectations for the process and outcomes of reimagining equitable policies, learning, and community power.
Pugh received a bachelor’s degree in Public Policy, a double minor in Education and African American & Diaspora Studies from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She also has a master’s in education, from the University of Missouri, St. Louis. She has served in fellowships with the North Carolina Public School Forum, WomenNC, and Forward Through Ferguson to learn the intricacies of equitable K-12 education policy. Additionally, Cara pursued meaningful classroom experiences with Breakthrough Collaborative, the Emily K Center, Teach For America, and EAGLE Tower Grove East so that she could view policy through the lens of an educator and experience firsthand the role of a community leader. As a community organizer with WEPOWER and campaign manager for SLPS Board of Education member, Alisha Sonnier, Cara organized get out the vote actions and power meetings with residents of East St. Louis and St. Louis amidst the pandemic to achieve economic justice and education policy wins.
Currently, as an Interdisciplinary Research Leadership Fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the founder of Cara C. Pugh, Consulting LLC, Pugh coaches and supports community leaders, residents, and community-based organizations about power building and holding power through policy and systems level change.
