Erica Teasley Linnick is the Vice President of the State Infrastructure Fund. She came to NEO after serving as Acting Director and Senior Program Officer of the Democracy team at the Open Society Foundations where she handled the voting rights and access to justice portfolios.
A civil rights attorney and voting rights advocate, she came to philanthropy most recently as Coordinator of the African American Redistricting Collaborative where she worked to ensure that the African American community fully participated in California’s political process. For over seven years prior, Erica was Western Regional Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund where she conducted civil rights litigation and participated in public education and legislative advocacy efforts. During her tenure as a business litigator in San Francisco, Erica served on the Board of Directors of both the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area and the Northern California ACLU. She also served as Board Chair of the Impact Fund and is a past President of the West Los Angeles Area Planning Commission. A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley and Hastings College of the Law, Erica worked as a Congressional Legislative Assistant and has state and national campaign and elections experience. She has received numerous honors including Super Lawyers’ Southern California Rising Star, the Minority Bar Coalition of San Francisco Award for Excellence and Service to the Community, and the key to the City of El Paso, Texas. She has been a guest lecturer in the U.S. and abroad, has appeared on Nation Public Radio, and has been quoted in a variety of publications including the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, and Inside Philanthropy.