Each body of work directly informed the next.
My career began in direct service and kept widening outward — into community leadership, government, organizing, policy, executive leadership, economic development, and institution-building.
The settings changed. The through-line did not: remove the barriers, design pathways to access, design ecosystems that are sustainable and led by the people they intend to serve. That's the North Star.
Explore Selected WorkThree bodies of work, one through-line.
Survivors as architects of safety
For more than a decade, I've helped build platforms that position survivors of violence and people ignored by systems as organizers, policy leaders, and architects of public-safety solutions. The 2021 statewide We Are Survivors campaign connected lived experience with campaign strategy, legislative advocacy, public investment, and implementation.
- — Led and directed the statewide campaign
- — Resulted in AB 200 and the Flexible Cash Assistance for Survivors pilot†
- — Directed $100,000+ in subgrants to survivor-led grassroots organizations†
Ecosystem design, not event production
Under my strategic direction, SF Black Wall Street built an ecosystem supporting more than 90 Black entrepreneurs and distributing over $990,000 in grants across a two-year period — through technical assistance, direct funding, cultural activations, visibility, and access to markets and partnerships. Our first San Francisco Juneteenth Gala welcomed more than 700 guests and generated over $300,000 for venues, vendors, contractors, performers, and event-production businesses emerging from nearly two years of pandemic disruption — establishing the credibility and partnerships behind activations across Market Street, the waterfront, and major city venues.
Read the BMDP social impact report →Tinisch can sit in rooms with key government leaders, call a spade a spade, and still maintain the trust and respect needed to organize in community. That balance is rare — and it makes her leadership unique.
Translating community experience into public systems
Black-out-migration research, building neighborhood leadership, designing violence-intervention and reentry programs, advising mayors and city agencies, and navigating systems have shaped my ability to translate community experience into public systems and institutional action.
- — SF African American Out-Migration Task Force
- — Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services
- — Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice
- — CalWORKs Family Stabilization leadership
- — Housing Support Program that became AB 74
- — Vice Chair, SF African American Reparations Advisory Committee
The arenas I've built in.
Public Safety & Justice
Safety strategy shaped by the people who've actually lived through violence — not theorized about it. Prevention, healing, and the conditions communities need to thrive, not just get by.
Survivor Leadership
Building platforms through which people closest to harm shape policy, public investment, narrative, and institutional response.
Black Economic Power
Strengthening ownership, entrepreneurship, cultural enterprise, and the infrastructure required for Black businesses and communities to build wealth that compounds instead of resets.
Community Infrastructure
Designing programs, networks, institutions, and partnerships built to outlast a single grant, leader, campaign, or election cycle.
Policy & Government
Legislative strategy, public systems, coalition design, stakeholder engagement, and the long work of turning community experience into law and implementation.
Cultural Strategy
Culture isn't decoration on top of the strategy. It is the strategy. Narrative, gathering, and visibility that build economic power and civic imagination at the same time.
From direct service to systems change.
Each role sharpened the next, and all of it bends toward the same ends: safer communities, durable Black economic power, and institutions built to outlast the people who run them.
Selected governance and advisory leadership.
Community Based Public Safety Collective
A national body that provides technical assistance and training to help formalize community-based violence-intervention programs and partnerships at national scale.
cbpscollective.org →CLARO
The Center for Latino Advocacy, Resources and Organizing builds collective power within San Francisco's Latino community and other underserved communities through education, community organizing, and advocacy — so communities aren't just consulted, but represented and equipped to win real change.
clarosf.org →Reimagine San Quentin
Advising the reimagining of San Quentin and its learning center under California's new correctional model.
cdcr.ca.gov →SF African American Reparations Advisory Committee
Co-led the committee behind 111 recommendations for the City and County of San Francisco.
sfreparations.org →The work is documented. The next chapter is still being built.
For strategic advisory, partnerships, speaking, facilitation, or collaboration, start with a conversation.