Jotaka Eaddy

Jotaka L. Eaddy is the founder and CEO of Full Circle Strategies, LLC, a social impact consulting firm committed to advancing transformative change. Described by Forbes as the “Olivia Pope of Silicon Valley,” she is a seasoned strategist with more than 20 years of experience in policy, advocacy, and movement building.

Jotaka has spent her career creating lasting change at the highest levels. She directed the national and international advocacy campaign against the juvenile death penalty, contributing to the landmark 2005 Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons that abolished it. As Senior Director for Voting Rights at the NAACP, she led efforts that changed the Delaware State Constitution to expand voting rights for people with felony convictions, fought back voter suppression efforts across the country, and secured voting rights for more than 300,000 citizens in Virginia.

In 2020, she founded #WinWithBlackWomen, an intergenerational, intersectional network of Black women leaders representing business, sports, politics, entertainment, and beyond, committed to supporting Black women and the communities they serve. The network has garnered more than 600 million social media impressions.

One of the few Black women to serve in the C-Suite of a Silicon Valley company, Jotaka served as Vice President of Policy, Strategic Engagement, and Impact at LendUp, where her team helped save customers more than $200 million in fees and interest and created financial education courses viewed more than 2.1 million times.

Her advocacy has taken her before the United Nations Human Rights Council, the African Union, the Organization of American States, and the Council of Europe, and to speaking engagements across 49 states and 25 countries. Her work has been featured in Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Fortune, Essence, and many others.

A trailblazer from the very beginning, Jotaka was elected Student Body President at the University of South Carolina, becoming the first Black woman to hold that position in the university’s 213-year history and the first in the state of South Carolina. As a student senator, she authored legislation and coordinated strategies that resulted in the passage of the University of South Carolina’s student resolution calling for the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House Dome.