Our Staff

Alan Jenkins is Executive Director of The Opportunity Agenda, a communications, research, and policy organization dedicated to building the national will to expand opportunity for all. Before joining The Opportunity Agenda, Alan was Director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, managing over $50 million in grant making annually in the United States and eleven overseas regions. Previously, he served as Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he represented the United States government in constitutional and other litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to that, he was Associate Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., where he defended the rights of low-income communities suffering from exploitation and discrimination.

His other positions have included Assistant Adjunct Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, Law Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Law Clerk to U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Carter, and Coordinator of the Access to Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. Alan is a member of the Legal Services Corporation’s Special Task Force on Fiscal Oversight, serves on the Board of Governors of the New School University, and is a Co-Chair of the American Constitution Society's Project on the Constitution in the Twenty-First Century. He holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.A. in Media Studies from New School University, and a B.A. in Psychology and Social Relations from Harvard College.

You may download a high resolution photo of Alan below.