Rebecca joined Dogwood Health Trust in August 2021 as a Program Officer for Equity and was promoted to Vice President for Community Equity in September 2023.

Most recently, Rebecca served with Buncombe County Health and Human Services and Buncombe County Government. While there, she managed the Isaac Coleman Economic Community Investment grant, which targeted a $1.5 million investment in communities working to champion equitable opportunity. She also developed the Isaac Coleman Learning Collaborative, cultivating trust, authenticity, and inclusion to support innovative, community-driven solutions. Prior to her work at Buncombe County, she served with the Asheville Housing Authority, working one-on-one on the ground with Asheville’s underserved communities facing varied socioeconomic barriers, which granted an intimate view of institutional and structural drivers of inequity. During this time, she also represented the Housing Authority on Asheville’s team for Invest Health: Strategies for Healthier Cities, a national convening of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Reinvestment Fund. Through Invest Health, Rebecca co-created a community-led development process for equitable health and well-being infrastructure.

Rebecca understands that effective contribution requires that we embrace and live into the unique gifts, knowledge, and insight that can’t be obtained through higher education alone – but through the wisdom of lived experience and a deeper understanding of the layered reality that many people in our community are navigating daily. She prides herself on using this skillset to inform the lens through which she views the work, the world, and especially our community. As a former small business owner, her approach to systemic change is entrepreneurial, amplifying the power of community-driven, novel, innovative ideas to eradicate long-standing problems.

Rebecca holds a Bachelor of Arts in Community Planning and Legal Advocacy from UMASS Boston and a Master’s in Public Health from the Gillings School of Global Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.