Jaime Simmons

Jaime Simmons is a nonprofit leader and community engagement strategist with over twenty-five years of experience helping organizations build stronger operations, more inclusive cultures, and deeper community partnerships. As a disabled, white, queer, cisgender woman, I lead from the intersection of these identities, aware of both the marginalization and the privilege embedded within it. That awareness shapes my work: dismantling hierarchy and building programs rooted in community power rather than top-down control. She most recently served as Director of the Bayer Center for Nonprofit Management and Covestro Center for Community Engagement, where she connected mission-driven organizations with strategic tools, board development training, and cross-sector partnerships. Her earlier career includes senior roles at Every Child, Inc., Berkshire Hills Music Academy, and Girl Scouts of Western Washington. She holds master's degrees in Socially Responsible Business, a master's degree in Organizational Design and Systems, and is completing her Ph.D. in Community Engagement at Point Park University.
Jaime's research and practice focus on transforming how institutions engage with the communities they serve. Her scholarship examines nonprofit organizational development, feminist activism, alternative organizational structures, and the role of art in social movements and placemaking. She advocates for a fundamental shift in how academic and nonprofit institutions approach community work, moving from extractive research models to collaborative partnerships where community wisdom and research methodology converge. Her work challenges organizations to reimagine expertise itself, recognizing that communities possess profound knowledge about their own challenges, assets, and solutions.
Through facilitating workshops, conducting board assessments, and speaking at conferences, Jaime helps organizations move from traditional top-down approaches to genuine partnership models. Her extensive work in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) spans her entire career, informing her commitment to creating more equitable and accessible nonprofit structures. Based in Pittsburgh, she continues to advance the field through both practical application and scholarly inquiry, working toward a vision in which institutions are accountable to communities and scholarship serves collective flourishing rather than individual advancement. When her nose is not in books, she is usually adventuring with her family, trying to discover everything she can about the world around her.

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