Sheryl Evans Davis

Sheryl Evans Davis, EdD is a changemaker who leads relationship-driven, community-engaged initiatives. Appointed Executive Director of the San Francisco Human Rights Commission by Mayor Edwin Lee in 2016, Davis is a passionate champion of equity, opportunity, and access for all. For nearly three decades, she has made contributions as an educator and leader with expertise in community outreach and engagement, workforce development, youth development, and violence prevention.

Davis led efforts to center community voice and prioritize equity in addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations, including coordinating the allocations process of $120 million in grant monies to support the Black community in San Francisco. Starting in 2019, Davis worked to build out an equity framework with San Francisco community stakeholders and City departments, resulting in the launch of the Office of Racial Equity, an initiative housed within the SFHRC. Davis also oversees Black 2 San Francisco, the Dream Keeper Initiative, the Equity Studies Task Force, Everybody Reads, and Opportunities For All, among other programs housed within the Human Rights Commission.

Davis was founding Director of Mo’MAGIC, a program of the San Francisco Public Defender’s office in service of children, youth, and community in the City’s Fillmore District. Davis has also served on the SFPD Fair & Impartial Policing and Community Policing Advisory Committees, the Fillmore Community Benefits District, and the Redevelopment Agency's Western Addition Citizen Advisory Committee. The 2014 recipient of the Anthony Logan Award from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Bay Area chapter, a 2021 winner of the Black Women Organized for Political Action’s Ella Hill Hutch Award, and the 2022 awardee of AERA's Septima Clark-Ella Baker Human Rights Award, she holds a BA from San Francisco State University, an MPA from the University of San Francisco, and an EdD from the University of Southern California; in 2019, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from USF. In 2023, Davis published her first children’s book, Free to Sing, a celebration of freedom of expression and the liberating power of song.