Yolanda Davis-Overstreet | Former Board Member | Pronouns: she/her/hers | yolanda@mobilityjustice.org
Yolanda Davis-Overstreet, a recent graduate of the Urban Sustainability Master’s Program (USMA) at Antioch University, Los Angeles, is a community sustainability, transportation equity and mobility justice activist with a primary focus on pedestrian safety in communities of color at the intersection of the social and environmental justice issues. Yolanda has executed a range of diverse work assignments as a past marketing and graphic design entrepreneur turned social and environmental activist in both the private and nonprofit sectors. She is currently working with her alumnus (Antioch University LA) as part of the Diversity Committee and advancing the USMA mission, a Board Member At-Large on the West Adams Neighborhood Council, part of the Student Attendance Review Team (SART) as a Parent Advocate for New LA Charter School (elementary and middle school), and the National Active Transportation Equity Work Group for Safe Routes to School National Partnership. Yolanda is a past committee member of the Enforcement Committee for the Los Angeles Vision Zero Alliance. Yolanda has a son who is twenty-two, as well is the caretaker of her daughter who recently turned seventeen and mother who is ninety-six.
Yolanda understands what it means to grow-up within a historically marginalized community. West Adams, a neighborhood located in South Los Angeles is historically known for its predominantly African Americans population dating back to the Second Great Migration of 1940. As a woman of color, mother, a social and environmental activist and recently trained urban sustainability, one of the most vital lessons Yolanda has learned and activated in these transformative years doing community service work is that her narrative matters. She too understands that this understanding transcends into “our community narrative matters and when guided and activated it can bring about just and healing change.” Through Yolanda’s community work, she has learned to take on the role of an adaptive leader through the process of continuous comparative and observational research, along with the actions of local and national relationship building. She believes it is imperative that our communities collectively shift into understanding and valuing the connection on how policy, wellness, education, the criminal justice system, housing, climate, biodiversity and equitable transportation play a vital role at the intersection of leading us into improved upon pedestrian safety, infrastructure and wellness for our youth, families and overall human sustainability.