Joe Scantlebury
Senior Policy Officer
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation


Joe Scantlebury is a Senior Policy Officer in the United States Program Advocacy Division of the 
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His grant making focuses on core strategy policy advocacy that 
advances the foundations College Ready and Postsecondary Success strategies.  Both of these 
strategies aim to address inequity and poverty within the U.S. by increasing opportunities for all 
students to graduate from high school ready for college and careers and all young adults to complete
a postsecondary education credential with labor market value.   

Joe is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the National Poverty Law Center. He has chaired
the board of the Center for Community Conferencing; vice chaired the board of the National Youth 
Employment Coalition; and was a recipient of the United States-South Africa Emerging Leaders Fellowship. 

Prior to joining the foundation, Joe was a staff attorney for the Youth Law Center, where he advocated
nationally on behalf of children in the juvenile justice and foster care systems.  He also helped the 
Legal Action Center establish the National H.I.R.E. Network, a national ex-offender employment clearinghouse,
and served as its first Director.  He was also Executive Director of STRIVE/ East Harlem Employment Service -
a dynamic international workforce development agency.  Joe has also served as a Special United States Attorney
for the District of Columbia; an impact litigator for the United States Department of Labor-Office of the 
Solicitor, the Civil Rights Division; and an associate at the New York City labor and employment law firm 
Eisner, Levy, Pollack & Ratner, P.C.

Joe received his Bachelor of Science degree from the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations
at Cornell University, where he was one of the first Cornell Tradition Fellows.  He received his Juris Doctorate
from New York University School of Law, where he was a Root-Tilden-Snow Fellow.

Joe's most important commitment and greatest blessing is being a parent to his son Preston.