Amanda Jasso

Amanda Jasso has over 14 years experience working on equity and inclusion initiatives across multiple systems, including within municipal government. She has experience providing racial equity consultation, training, and assessment across a large city government in one of the fastest growing cities in the nation, Austin, Texas. At the City of Austin, she has supported cohorts of departments as they engage with the City’s first equity assessment process; this has included antiracist equity training, 1:1 coaching and support, researching promising practices, data evaluation, action planning, implementation of those plans, and evaluation of outcomes and impact. For this project, Amanda plans to tie this experience into the design, implementation, and evaluation of an assessment tool and process with the City of Des Moines. 

She has experience co-creating a racial equity tool with directly impacted residents, cross-departmental leadership, and consultants to guide a $300 million investment for displacement prevention measures as related to Project Connect. This is the largest anti displacement fund of its kind tied to a major transportation project. This model supports systems change and disrupts broad engagement processes that regularly exclude community members who are closest to the problems we are trying to solve. She remains involved in the ongoing implementation of strategies that the tool supports. 

Her background also includes community archives and libraries, which is helpful in connecting the past to our present and our future, recognizing that past harms continue to be perpetuated in municipal policies, practices, and procedures. She applies historical context to racial equity work as one way of honoring the labor of those before us in the quest for systemic change. She holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Washington and a Bachelor of Arts in Communication from the University of Pennsylvania.