Dear PolicyLink colleague,

It is with love and appreciation that we announce the departure from PolicyLink of Kalima Rose, who served as Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, and many other roles during her 22-year tenure building this organization.

Kalima took on the distinct challenges of the decades, consistently bringing artists and culture bearers to imbue healing and meaning to the work. Her methods demonstrate her deep commitment to peer learning and talent for movement building that centers BIPOC leaders.

In our inception years, as nationally we sought to lift up what was working to address the dual threats of poverty and racism, she led the development of the Beyond Gentrification: Equitable Development Toolkit, comprising 43 tools used by movement advocates and leaders, to support local policies that addressed gentrification, economic inclusion, housing justice, and community-driven development.

After the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Kalima helped PolicyLink open an office in New Orleans where she worked with local leaders for seven years to assert racial equity and equitable development in the recovery of the Gulf Coast. Her methods included annual racial equity recovery reports; serving as expert witness in a successful federal lawsuit that asserted fair housing violations in the recovery grant formula for Black households; and supporting the City of New Orleans and the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority to focus on economic inclusion of Black workers and firms in jobs and procurement in the city. Kalima invested in the development of cross-sector and cross-issue coalitions that endure in New Orleans and across Louisiana today.

Upon her return to Oakland headquarters, she took on the directorship of the PolicyLink Center for Infrastructure Equity and became a driving force behind many Obama-era initiatives, including the Sustainable Communities Initiative and the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. Both initiatives required equity assessments of every region of the country and drove infrastructure investments to close disparities and strengthen health outcomes for disinvested communities facing climate challenges.

Since 2018, she has led the Water Equity and Climate Resilience Caucus, in partnership with the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy. With 88 national and frontline member organizations that center environmental justice and BIPOC communities, the Caucus has advanced billions of new federal dollars aimed for the communities most impacted by toxic or unaffordable water, climate-driven flooding, and drought and sea level rise.   

This last year, she convened a cohort of the Ambassadors for Health Equity that comprised 25 local and national housing justice leaders, who together envisioned a transformative system of housing justice and the infrastructure that would help us realize that vision. Kalima convened the cohort while advocating tirelessly for equitable investments in water and housing through Congressional appropriations including CARES Act and American Rescue Plan Act.

As Kalima steps into the next chapter of her creative life at the end of November, we thank her for these contributions that helped build PolicyLink and the national equity movement. If you would like to reach her, she would love to hear from you at [email protected].

Warmly,

Michael McAfee, President and CEO

Ashleigh Gardere, Executive Vice President