Virginia F. Walden-Ford

A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Virginia Walden-Ford was raised by William Harry Fowler and Marion Virginia Fowler Armstrong, both public school educators. Her father was a principal and the first black assistant superintendent of the Little Rock school district. Her mother was one of the first black teachers to work at an all-white elementary school there. Walden-Ford and her twin sister were among a group of about 130 black students who were handpicked to desegregate the Little Rock’s high schools in the mid 1960s.

Walden-Ford has served as Community Outreach Director/Media Specialist for Friends of Choice in Urban Schools (FOCUS), as a volunteer with the Center for Education Reform in their 1997 parent outreach campaign, and as a Parent Outreach Coordinator with the National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in their 1998 effort to organize parents to support school choice and the D.C. Scholarship Act. She is a National Board Member and a founding member of The Black Alliance for Educational Options, Inc. and is President of the organization’s Washington, D.C. chapter. Walden-Ford also serves as a Board Member of the Booker T. Washington Public Charter School and as Executive Director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, Inc, a clearinghouse designed to organize and educate parents to empower them to make appropriate educational decisions for their children.

Walden-Ford was the recipient of the Heritage Foundation''s prestigious 2004 Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship, the Black Alliance for Educational Options’ (BAEO) 2004 Vision Award and the 2005 Leonard F. DeFiore Parental Choice Advocate Award from the National Catholic Education Association (NCEA). She is the author of Voices, Choices, and Second Chances: How to Win the Battle to Bring Opportunity Scholarships to Your State.

	Parents & Grassroots Organizing