Prior to Children First, Donna was a senior fellow at the respected national think tank, the Center for American Progress, where she led the Center’s research on early childhood education and public infrastructure and was a contributing researcher to the Center’s work to reduce the incidence of poverty. She served as Secretary of Policy and Planning for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania from 2003 to 2010, where she was responsible for the state’s education, public support, environmental, and healthcare policies. While in that position, Donna led the development of the state’s Cover All Kids program, which expanded access to affordable health care to nearly every child in the state. Donna also led a seven-year effort to boost funding for public education, which increased K-12 funding by over $2 billion, and designed the state’s groundbreaking school funding formula, enacted in 2008.

Donna was the founding Executive Director of Good Schools, a grassroots organizing campaign that successfully pushed public education to the top issue in the 2002 race for Governor. She also served as the City of Philadelphia’s Deputy Mayor of Policy and Planning from 1999–2002, where she designed and led the Greater Philadelphia Works Program, one of the nation’s largest and most successful efforts to help single mothers on welfare achieve self-sufficiency. Donna holds a master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania’s Fels Center of Government and a master’s degree in Intercultural Management from the School for International Training.