Renita Francois
Renita Francois (she/her/hers) is the Chief Strategy Officer at Tides Advocacy, a 501(c)(4) fiscal sponsor with a team of political, legal and financial experts supporting progressive advocacy work nationwide. Prior to joining Tides Advocacy, Renita spent 7 years at the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice in NYC leading one of the De Blasio administration’s signature community safety initiatives as the Executive Director of the Mayor’s Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety (MAP), a place-based intervention focused on reducing violence by resourcing residents, City agencies and community-based organizations to address the factors underlying safety.
She is known as one of the key architects of NeighborhoodStat, a process that brings stakeholders in impacted communities together with City leadership to identify shared priorities and implement non-law enforcement centered public safety strategies. As a result of this work, Renita became a founding leader of New York City’s Office of Neighborhood Safety.
In addition, she has served as a resource coordinator working in juvenile justice at Brooklyn Family Court, and a frontline staff member for public housing programs in both Los Angeles and Compton, California, working directly with Black and Brown communities facing multilayered systemic challenges.
Renita holds a BA in American Studies from UC Berkeley and an MBA from Cornell University, where she was a Roy H. Park Leadership Fellow. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and is originally from South Central Los Angeles.