Leah Rankin

Associate Director of Statewide Operations and Innovation, Alliance
MSW

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253-315-5570
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Leah’s role focuses on leading and building out Continuous Quality Improvement work in support of the Alliance’s goal to deliver innovative, high quality trainings. She also oversees data and information management to ensure the organization has the strong infrastructure to meet training goals and capture the excellence of the Alliance’s work.

Prior to joining the Alliance, Leah partnered with the organization for three years as part of the evaluation team at Partners for Our Children, where she also completed program evaluation work for other interventions. Prior to that, Leah managed housing programs for young families experiencing homelessness in King and Snohomish counties for seven years.

Leah has master’s degrees in social work and English from the University of Washington, as well as bachelor’s degrees in engineering and English from Purdue University. At Purdue, Leah was a first-year honors engineering TA for four years, where she partnered in reshaping the first-year sequence around best and emerging practices in engineering pedagogy, particularly around improving retention of students from underrepresented identities. Leah’s graduate studies focused on adult pedagogy, public scholarship, and community engagement. Her focus on power sharing in the classroom and improving classroom environments for students of color earned her a departmental Endorsement in Critical Instruction.

She is motivated in this work by significant personal and family experience with child welfare systems in multiple states including Minnesota, Maryland, and Tennessee. Outside of work, you can find Leah playing ice hockey at any rink, mountain biking local trails, or backpacking in the Cascades.