Gloria Walton
Template:TOCnestleft Gloria Walton is one of the country’s most exciting “next generation” political leaders. For the last seven years she has been President & CEO of Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE), a South LA-based community organization widely recognized as a leader in the development of cutting-edge strategies to ensure that black and brown, poor and working-class communities have an equal voice in the democratic process.
Under Ms. Walton’s leadership SCOPE has played a pivotal role in several significant campaigns, including serving as an anchor organization in winning statewide alliance efforts to pass California’s Proposition 30 (which increased taxes for upper income earners and restored $6 billion in education funding, temporarily ending budget cuts to education for the first time in years); and Proposition 47 (which reformed the three strikes law by reducing non-violent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and put the cost savings into rehabilitation, social programs, and mental health services). Ms. Walton also led the organizing effort for SCOPE’s green jobs programs that couple entry level positions with job training to create career pathways into good, green jobs targeted for workers in low-income neighborhoods. Most recently, under her leadership SCOPE successfully advocated, as part of statewide climate equity coalitions, to pass a set of landmark climate bills (SB 32, AB 197, AB 1550 and AB 2722) that set targets to reduce greenhouse gases by 2030; bring accountability and transparency to state climate agencies and top polluters; and address the need for targeted investment in green infrastructure and good jobs.
In 2016 Ms. Walton received the NAACP-LA’s Empowerment Award; the LA League of Conservation Voters Environmental Justice Champion Award; and the Center for Community Change’s Champion in Community Organizing Award. She was a recipient of the James Irvine Foundation Fund for Leadership Advancement grant awarded in 2014, and was named one of Liberty Hill Foundation’s Leaders to Watch in 2011.
Ms. Walton currently serves on the Board of Directors of California Calls and the Solutions Project, the Coordinating Committee of the Black Worker Center, and is a Founding Advisory Board member of a national collaborative known as BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership & Dignity).
Additionally, Ms. Walton holds a Governor-appointed seat on the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resiliency Program Technical Advisory Council, and sits on the UCLA Advance Energy Community Technical Advisory Committee. She is also a member of the Safeguarding California Climate Justice Work Group convened by the Resources Legacy Fund.
Ms. Walton has authored multiple pieces for the Huffington Post, The Nation, and online blogs for the Center for Community Change, Equal Voice for America’s Families, and the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, covering topics ranging from environmental racism and clean energy jobs to voter engagement and racial justice.[1]
National Leading From the Inside Out Alum
Gloria Walton, President & CEO, AGENDA / SCOPE was a 2014 Rockwood Leadership Institute National Leading From the Inside Out Alum.[2]