Adria D. Goodson

Adria Goodson directs Hunt Alternatives' Prime Movers program and serves as an executive leadership coach on the faculty of Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. For over 15 years, Adria has worked with foundations and nonprofits to help them strategically support leaders who are seeking to create a more just society and world. She has worked with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s After School Project, The Hestia Fund, Resource Generation, and the Boston College Media Research and Action Project. Adria’s parents, who participated in the black civil rights movement, seeded her interest in social movements. This interest intensified into a lifetime passion through her Jesuit high school education, and her volunteer involvement with the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago’s anti-racism efforts and Industrial Areas Foundation mobilization efforts. Adria published a chapter entitled “Building Bridges, Building Leaders: Theory, Action and Lived Experience” in the book Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics, and Social Movement Scholarship. Adria earned her PhD from Boston College in sociology, specializing in social movement theory, public policy, and philanthropy.

Before returning to graduate school, Adria spent almost a decade in for-profit and non-profit management positions. At the Leo Burnett Company in Chicago, she developed advertising and marketing strategies for clients, including McDonald’s Corporation and Kellogg Corporation. She is founding member of SHEGives! Boston, a women’s giving circle, and is on the board of the Grassroots Policy Project.