Our Team

Before launching Watershed Impact, 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 over 40 successful legislative and ballot campaigns, winning billions of dollars in minimum wage increases for millions of people in nearly 20 states across the political spectrum, plus 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 proven and effective advocates. She served as lead lobbyist, and was a frequent media commentator, regularly featured in national outlets like CNBC, NBC News, PBS and the Washington Post, among dozens of print, TV, radio, and industry outlets. She played leadership roles in strategic planning, communications, staff hiring and development, fundraising, financial management, and board development, significantly strengthening the organization’s impact. She also 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 delivered training workshops and 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. At NOAA, the federal ocean agency, Alissa served as the communication and outreach lead for the 30-office Coral Reef Conservation Program. There 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 over 100 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, is functionally fluent in Spanish, and has elementary proficiency in American Sign Language. When she’s not working, you can find Alissa listening to audiobooks, having family dance parties, and going on outdoor adventures with her spouse and preteen son.

Connect with Alissa on LinkedIn