Sondra Youdelman

Sondra Youdelman joined the Drug Policy Action Board of Directors in September 2021. She is an organizer, campaigner, and movement builder, and brings these skills and perspectives to the Board.

Sondra has 25+ years of experience as an organizer with grassroots groups and low-income constituencies. She is currently the Campaigns Director for People’s Action, a network of community-based power-building organizations in the United States. People’s Action currently organizes campaigns around housing, healthcare, climate, equitable development, and more. Right after Trump got elected, Sondra joined the team at the Peoples Climate Movement and helped coordinate their 150,000+ person mass mobilization in Washington, DC at the end of the first 100 days of the new administration; then coordinated a dialogue process with mass-based resistance groups to reflect on learnings; and finally worked to develop multi-sectoral collaborative partnerships & plans in states. Her foundational organizing experience consisted of 16 years at Community Voices Heard (CVH), a membership organization of low-income NYers that organize to influence policy change, where she focused on building campaigns around welfare & workforce development, public housing improvement & preservation, civic engagement & participatory democracy, and more. As ED, she helped grow CVH from a one-city, one-issue shop into a multi-chapter, multi-issue organization. She also developed a long-standing partnership with VOCAL-NY while at CVH – a key partner of DPA – and continues to engage deeply with them.

Sondra has her Bachelor’s degree in American Studies focusing on Oppression & Revolution from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT and a Master of Public Affairs from Princeton University’s School of Public & International Affairs. She currently resides in New York.