Khea Pollard

Executive Director of the Black Women's Resilience Project

Khea Pollard is the Executive Director of the Black Women’s Resilience Project designing programs that help individuals and families build economic resilience. The Born Well Guaranteed Income Program is the latest addition to her design portfolio, supporting pregnant Black moms with direct cash to help reduce Black infant mortality and support healthy births.

Khea has a wealth of experience in the public, private and government sectors advocating for the equitable redistribution of power through strategies such as guaranteed income, community-driven programming, and cooperative development in policy and practice for government, non-profit, and philanthropic entities. She has fostered collaboration, facilitated dialogue, and implemented policy to make improvements in health, human service, and criminal justice systems.

Khea was formerly Director of Economic Mobility and Opportunity at Jewish Family Service of San Diego, where she designed and led innovative projects such as the region’s first guaranteed income program — the San Diego for Every Child Guaranteed Income Project – and several other cash transfer programs. Prior to that, Pollard was a Justice Program Manager for the National Association of Counties, serving County governments across the United States.

Her work focused on the intersection of behavioral health, criminal justice reform, and racial equity, supporting counties to make evidence-based policy changes to reduce the number of individuals with mental illness in county jails.

Locally, Pollard served several years as the Health and Human Services Policy Advisor and Community Representative to Supervisor Greg Cox at the County San Diego, advising on issues pertaining to children and youth, education, child welfare, juvenile justice, safety net and eligibility programs, behavioral health, and probation. She was a small business owner of a coffeeshop cooperative named Café X: By Any Beans Necessary and is currently a consultant for program design, educating community about the fundamentals of the cooperative economic model.

She enjoys supporting community-based organizations, currently serving as the Youth Prioritization Mentor for San Diego Youth Will and serves on the Community Advisory Board (CAB) for the Environmental Health Coalition’s Transformative Climate Communities Initiative Rooted In Communidad, Cultivating Equity, serving communities negatively impacted by discriminatory environmental policies and practices. She has worked on numerous nonprofit consulting projects in the areas of finance, board development, strategic planning, policy, civic engagement, human resources and more.

Pollard is also a proud Alumna of the RISE Urban Leadership Fellowship Program and has served on the executive committees of the Black Women’s Institute for Leadership Development (BWILD) and the Urban League Young Professionals.

A native San Diegan, Pollard graduated from the University of San Diego (USD) with a B.A. in English, a B.A. in Ethnic Studies, and a master’s degree in Nonprofit Leadership and Management.