Lindsay Coates

Lindsay Coates serves as Executive Vice President for InterAction and also heads the Public Policy and Communications Team, where she works to realize the goals of InterAction and the community of 200 nongovernmental organizations that it represents. From 2004-2008, Lindsay was the COO at Population Action International, a research and advocacy institute. Prior to her work in the NGO world, Lindsay practiced civil rights law in various capacities, among them Chief of Staff for the U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights  and Equal Employment Opportunity Attorney and Officer at the National Gallery of Art.
 

Lindsay currently serves on the Boards of the Global Health Council, the faith-based nongovernmental development agency Episcopal Relief and Development,  the Public Policy Committee of the Independent Sector and as a civil society representative on the steering committee for the World Banks' new formed Global Partnership for Social Accountability.  She served on the Obama administration’s Task Force on Global Poverty—run by the Whitehouse Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. She has been a Trustee for her alma mater the University of the South at Sewanee and a Board Member for the Mississippi Volunteer Lawyers Project, which provides legal services to low income citizens.
 

During the 2008-2009 academic year, Lindsay was a nonresident Fellow of Seminar XXI, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for International Studies, studying Foreign Politics, International Relations and the National Interest. She completed the Graduate Executive Leadership Development Program of Columbia University, holds a J.D. from the University of Mississippi School of Law, with Honors, and a B.A. (magna cum laude) in Political Science (focus on International Relations) from Sewanee which included a junior year of study at the London School of Economics.