2022 NIDA-NIAAA NIMH Diversity Supp

Rashada Alexander, PhD

Rashada Alexander provides strategic leadership for the AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellowships program (STPF). With a team of 20 staff and a $16+ million-dollar annual budget, she administers programming and professional development for more than 250 fellows annually in the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the U.S. government. As an STPF alum, she puts her experience to good use in leading the next evolution of the program to ensure it continues to excel in connecting scientific expertise with policymaking.

She joins AAAS from the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research (FFAR), where she optimized and streamlined operations, and assessed the impact of FFAR’s research funding. Before that, she was a program director in the Division of Research Capacity Building at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Two of her 10 years at NIH were as an STPF fellow.

Alexander earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Kentucky. She is also a proud alum of Youngstown State University where she earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry.