About

Alissa Barron-Menza is the founder and principal of Watershed Impact, a social impact consulting and advocacy firm that helps nonprofits, businesses and coalitions achieve transformative impact. She has over 20 years of management experience leading economic, environmental and equity initiatives across the nonprofit, private, and public sectors. Alissa specializes in federal and state policy advocacy, large-scale coalition building, sustainable business, strategic communications, and nonprofit organizational development. She is also active in disability advocacy as a nonprofit developer, board member, and parent advocate.

Before launching her consulting practice, Alissa co-led Business for a Fair Minimum Wage (BFMW), a national policy advocacy organization, for over a decade. She remains on the BFMW board. She played a key role in growing the organization and winning billions of dollars in minimum wage increases for millions of people in 17 states and additional cities and counties. She co-led federal campaigns and served as a core lobbyist for the Raise the Wage Act, which passed the House in 2019 and 2021. Alissa successfully grew BFMW’s business network and trained hundreds of business owners and executives as effective advocates. She served as a lead spokesperson and frequent media commentator featured in national outlets like CNBC, NBC News, PBS and the Washington Post, as well as regional print, TV and radio, and industry press, among other outlets. She took on leadership roles in strategic planning, communications (including leading new website and CRM development), fundraising, and financial management, significantly strengthening the organization's impact. She served on the steering committee for many campaign coalitions, developing strategic partnerships and helping shape policy and campaign strategy.

Alissa also served as Managing Director of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE, now Common Future), where she directed membership programs, including a national peer mentoring program, and helped develop and staff the BALLE Local Economy Fellowship. She grew membership and helped increase organizational capacity through successful programming, communication and fundraising efforts. She was instrumental in leading BALLE’s annual international conference and worked directly with business associations on board and staff development, program development, fundraising, revenue generation, and marketing. Alissa also co-directed operations management, hiring and overseeing staff and contractors, developing and leading staff retreats, managing health insurance plans, and leading organizational technology upgrades, including a website overhaul and CRM database development.

Earlier in her career, Alissa held leadership roles on a range of environmental and economic development issues. She worked as communications director and research manager for author and local economic development expert Michael Shuman. With Michael, she served as co-author and lead researcher for the Community Food Enterprise initiative, a partnership with the Wallace Center at Winrock International. She served as global steering committee chair and U.S. government lead for the International Year of the Reef 2008, where she was instrumental in building a coalition of governments, international environmental NGOs, and community organizations across 65 nations and territories. For NOAA, the federal ocean agency, Alissa served as the communication and outreach lead for the 30-office Coral Reef Conservation Program. Here she designed and led a capacity-building technical assistance and grants program for conservation outreach professionals. While at NOAA, she also chaired the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force Education and Outreach Working Group, an active collaboration of federal agencies, state and territory agencies, research universities, and national and regional NGOs. Finally, she helped develop and lead a multi-sector network of watershed technical assistance providers in Pennsylvania called C-SAW, which is still in operation 25 years later.

Alissa holds an Honors B.A. from Brown University in Environmental Studies and Development Studies. She is functionally fluent in Spanish, has elementary proficiency in American Sign Language, and is familiar with a range of Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) systems, supporting her work to engage communities and build more inclusive organizations.

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