Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives

Sandra Boyd joined Achieve in 2006 as a Vice President and presently serves as the organization’s Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice President of Strategic Initiatives. In her capacity as COO, she provides overall organizational leadership, serving as “second in command” on a daily basis and being responsible for all organizational activities and operations. In her capacity as Senior Vice President, Strategic Initiatives, she is responsible for positioning Achieve's initiatives and major programs for success, directly managing strategic alliances and partnerships and overseeing external affairs and communications so that Achieve can fulfill its mission of ensuring all students graduate from high school ready for college, careers and citizenship.

Before joining Achieve, Ms. Boyd was vice president of human resources policy for the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). There, she served as a senior advocate before Congress and federal agencies on workplace issues, including education, training, competitiveness, immigration, labor and employment. Ms. Boyd served in leadership roles in a number of broad-based national coalitions, including serving as chair of Compete America and the first employer-based workplace flexibility coalition, the FLECS coalition. She also served on the National Advisory Commission on Workplace Flexibility and is a former board member of the National Immigration Forum.

Prior to working for NAM, she was the assistant general counsel to the Labor Policy Association, an association of Fortune 500 senior human resources executives. Ms. Boyd also practiced law at Epstein, Becker and Green and served as an adjunct professor at George Washington University National Law Center. Ms. Boyd is a frequent speaker on education reform and human resources issues and has written extensively on these topics. In addition to her role as an author and editor of various Achieve publications, she co-authored the Employers Guide to the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Fair Labor Standards Handbook for States, Local Governments and Schools and the law school text Cases and Material on Federal Labor Standards (2nd Edition). She also has contributed to the American Bankers Association Human Resource Compliance Manual, State by State Guide to Human Resources Law, and the Employers Guide to Controlling Sexual Harassment, published by the Thompson Publishing Group.

Ms. Boyd obtained her J.D. from George Washington University and her B.A. magna cum laude from San Diego State University. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her husband, a middle school mathematics teacher.

Phone: (202) 419-1542