Giovanna Gray Lockhart

Giovanna Gray Lockhart, Founding Executive Director

Giovanna Gray Lockhart has more than twenty-five years of experience achieving high-impact results at the intersection of nonprofits, business, politics, and media. In 2023, she was tapped to be the Executive Director of the Frances Perkins Center, where she led the effort to designate the Frances Perkins National Monument in Newcastle, ME, signed into law by President Biden on December 16, 2024.

During a sabbatical from her term on the board of the national nonprofit StoryCorps, Lockhart advised the founder and senior leadership on a range of issues regarding management, long-term strategy, personnel, fundraising, marketing and communications, partnerships, and new initiatives. She also served as a Senior Advisor to PL+US, leading the political strategy for the passage of a federal paid family leave policy. Previously, Lockhart held senior roles at venture-backed companies, as Senior Director of Impact at The Wing and as Chief Strategy Officer at The Riveter. She has contributed to many national publications.

Lockhart began her career in politics, raising money for Presidential Candidate Howard Dean, pioneering programs delivering small-donor, internet-based fundraising that made Dean for America’s success possible, as well as many other Democratic campaigns to come. She co-founded Generation Obama—a political fundraising and advocacy group dedicated to organizing young people in the 2008 Obama campaign—and subsequently served as Senior Advisor to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, working both on her Congressional staff and on the Senator’s reelection campaigns. She led efforts for former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords’ gun violence prevention organization by connecting the issues of domestic violence and gun violence, work whose seeds appear in today’s legislation protecting women from abusers with guns. During the 2016 election cycle, she served as Washington Editor of Glamour Magazine.

In 2017, Lockhart founded the New York Women’s Collective, a political giving group that has contributed millions to Democratic women candidates. She serves on the Board of Directors of StoryCorps and is an angel investor in women-founded companies, most notably the sustainable luxury fashion company Another Tomorrow. She is a trusted advisor to women running for office across the country and to high-net-worth individuals seeking to invest in changing the political landscape.

Lockhart is a graduate of Connecticut College, where she majored in Gender and Women’s Studies and played goalie for the Division III Ice Hockey team. An active member of the Portland, Maine community, she serves as a trustee at the Waynflete School.