Sarah (Sally) Campbell

Senior Program Director

Sarah (Sally) Campbell, senior program director at Everyday Democracy, has devoted much of her career to designing and facilitating group processes that help diverse groups of people work together to find solutions to community problems. She has been working with dialogue-to-change programs since the early 1990s. Issues related to multiculturalism, youth, and education are of particular interest to her. Sally supervises Everyday Democracy program directors and senior associates who work with communities across the country. In this capacity, she provides coaching and mentoring, and designs and conducts trainings and team-building exercises. She also develops and refines tools for staff to use when they provide technical assistance to communities. On occasion, she visits communities where dialogue-to-change programs are underway.

Sally often plays a key role in special projects with national partners, for example, working with the Northwest Area Foundation on an initiative aimed at poverty reduction in rural communities; collaborating with the Southern Poverty Law Center on national “Mix It Up” dialogues for youth; helping the Annie E. Casey Foundation develop resources and public engagement strategies for disadvantaged urban families; working with a team of experts to develop a resource to help communities organize public dialogues on race for President Clinton's One America Race Initiative; and serving with the Community Relations Service of the U.S. Department of Justice Special Task Force on church arson.

Sally has represented Everyday Democracy on a National Civic League advisory board to develop an award for communities making progress on race relations. She also worked in collaboration with the Southwestern Educational Development Laboratory and statewide education reform initiatives in Arkansas and Oklahoma to connect grass-roots deliberation and problem solving to the development of education policy at the state level.

As a writer and editor, Sally contributes to Everyday Democracy's many publications, foremost among them, A Guide to Training Study Circle Facilitators (First and Second Editions), and Organizing Community-wide Dialogue for Action and Change.She has also been the author of a number of discussion guides.

Before she joined Everyday Democracy, Sally was the associate director of the Maine Council of Churches, a statewide ecumenical advocacy organization. In that role, she founded The Roundtable Center, a statewide agency dedicated to promoting citizen engagement efforts across Maine. Since 1995, at least 10,000 Mainers have taken part in study circles.

Sally holds a bachelor's degree in English from Sweet Briar College, and is certified in communications, group process, leadership development, meeting design, advanced facilitation, training design and implementation, and public relations. She is also a graduate of the Institute for Civic Leadership, Zeta Class.