Natalie McKinney
Executive Director and Co-Founder
Natalie McKinney is the executive director of Whole Child Strategies, Inc. She previously served as the Director of Policy for both Shelby County Schools and legacy Memphis City Schools, which included policy development and legislative planning. As part of the largest school district merger in the history of public education in America, Ms. McKinney led the effort to revise and develop a school district policy manual to accommodate the resulting amalgamation of rural, suburban, and urban schools.
Prior to arriving in Memphis, Ms. McKinney founded and served as the inaugural director of the Juvenile Law Clinic at North Carolina Central University (NCCU) School of Law, providing a holistic approach to representing youth accused of delinquent behavior and expelled from school. Ms. McKinney has also served as an adjunct professor and coordinator of the pro bono program for NCCU School of Law; a juvenile law research associate at the Institute of Government at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and a practicing lawyer in Durham, NC and Atlanta, GA.
Ms. McKinney holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, a Master of Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Spelman College.