Natalie McKinney

Co-Founder & Executive Director
Whole Child Strategies, Inc.

Natalie McKinney is the Co-founder and Executive Director of Whole Child Strategies, Inc. in Memphis. Whole Child Strategies, Inc. is a neighborhood non-profit designed to coordinate efforts, provide funding and critical supports to organize, mobilize and empower community-designed and initiated solutions to identifying and addressing the root causes to the out-of-school barriers hindering children from arriving to school, every day, on-time, engaged and ready to learn.

Prior to Whole Child Strategies, Inc., Ms. McKinney served as the Director of Policy for both Shelby County Schools and legacy Memphis City Schools, which included policy development and legislative planning. As part of the largest school district merger in American Public Education history, Ms. McKinney led the effort to revise and develop a school district policy manual to accommodate what amounted to an amalgamation of a rural, suburban and urban school districts.
Prior to her arrival to Memphis, Ms. McKinney founded and served as the inaugural director of the Juvenile Law Clinic at North Carolina Central University School of Law; providing a holistic approach to representing youth accused of delinquent behavior and expelled from school. During her tenure at NCCU School of Law, Ms. McKinney also served as an adjunct professor and coordinator of the pro bono program. During her time in North Carolina, Ms. McKinney also served as a juvenile law research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Institute of Government. At the beginning of her career, Ms. McKinney served as an associate at Moore & Van Allen, PLLC, in Durham, North Carolina and at Alston & Bird in Atlanta, Georgia.

Ms. McKinney holds a Juris Doctor from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, a Master of Public Affairs from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Spelman College.