Jessica Dandridge

Executive Director

The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans.

Tel: (504) 452-8112

As the Executive Director of The Water Collaborative of Greater New Orleans (TWC), Jessica Dandridge has dedicated her life to community advocacy and campaign development for organizations seeking to be socially, economically, and culturally inclusive. As the Executive Director of TWC she focuses on community led adaptation and mitigation as the core to water justice and climate resiliency strategies. To be resilient, Jessica believes communities needs redundant, rapidly distributed resources. To achieve this, Jessica has led a movement around water management as a tool for social and economic liberation that should be transformational to our most vulnerable communities. Today TWC focuses on water management, hazard mitigation, water justice through access, affordability, and quality, and equitable community transformation through blue/green jobs and the renewable economy.

Ms. Dandridge received her B.A at Xavier University of Louisiana in Political Science and her M.A in International Affairs with a concentration in conflict and security at The New School for Public Engagement in New York City. Since starting her career as a youth organizer in 2005, she has worked for, or in collaboration with over two dozen organizations in the Greater New Orleans and nationally. Before starting at the TWC, Ms. Jessica was the Louisiana State Director at the Campaign Election Engagement Project, and a Program Director for Rural Electric Cooperative Democracy Project for the Rockefeller Family Fund. Ms. Dandridge is a trained facilitator from YPQI, has a certificate in Leadership, Activism and Civil Rights from Brown University, and a certificate in Kingian Nonviolence Strategies from the Selma Center of Nonviolence. In her current work, Jessica is the Co-Chair of the National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Climate Resiliency Roundtable, A member of the Community Advisory Board for the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana and is a board member for New Harmony High School in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 2023, Jessica was selected for the 2023 Obama Leader USA Cohort, and was selected for 40 under 40 the Greater New Orleans Region.