Sheryl Ude serves as the Senior Advisor to the Chief Operating Officer, where she is responsible for supporting the COO in overseeing and executing a portfolio of strategic initiatives and projects across the Operating, Customer Service and Administration clusters. Sheryl brings 15 years of experience as a leader and change agent in large metropolitan regions. She has dedicated her career to harnessing strategic thinking, research and data, evaluation, and the power of people to create, lead, and implement operational and policy solutions from coast to coast. With her most recent work as a strategic advisor in the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office, she led trail blazing campaigns and initiatives to drive operational and cost efficiency plans, strategic collaboration, and legislative reform to transform communities in a more just way.

Several of her groundbreaking “firsts” gained national recognition, increased public trust and awareness, and have become best practices in regional leadership. This work includes:

• Instituted the Reimagining Atlanta City Detention Center initiative from a vision to the country’s first tangible operational, policy, and programming strategy for jail closure and justice reform;

• Led Atlanta’s strategic rebid and restructure of a multi-year and multi-million dollar as-needed engineering contract that aligned multi-department work and contract planning to accurately address upcoming infrastructure project needs;

• In collaboration with the water utility, led the update to San Francisco’s first customer ratepayer assurance scorecard and launched the first nonprofit resource fair to grow citywide contracting opportunities for underserved residents 

• Designed and opened San Francisco’s first-ever data academy for access to a 30,000-employee workforce to improve job performance;

• Executed San Francisco School District’s first ever 10-year Public Education Enrichment Fund program evaluation to restructure the City’s sports, libraries, arts, and music programs

Sheryl has an M.S.W. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and a B.A. Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She has been recognized for her contributions to community through the City and County of San Francisco Controller’s Office Merit Award for Professional Excellence and as one of ten honorees of the Outstanding Atlanta Class of 2020.