Erika L. Wood
Senior Program Officer, Civic Engagement and Government, Senior Advisor, Vice President of U.S. Programs
Erika Wood is a senior program officer on the Civic Engagement and Government team and senior advisor to the vice president of U.S. Programs. She oversees the foundation’s efforts to strengthen and expand structural democracy in the U.S. and supports efforts to align democracy strategies and initiatives across Ford’s U.S. Programs. Erika has spent more than two decades as a civil rights lawyer, working at the intersection of voting rights, civic participation, and community empowerment.
Before joining the foundation, Erika was a professor of law at New York Law School, where she directed the Voting Rights and Civic Participation Project. Prior to that, she was deputy director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice and taught the Public Policy Advocacy Clinic at the New York University School of Law. Erika has designed and launched major reform campaigns around the country, litigated complex civil rights cases, and provided legal counsel and strategic guidance to organizers, advocates and policy makers nationwide. She is a graduate of New York University and Rutgers Law School.
