Rashida Dawson is the Vice President of Financial Stability of United Way of Northwest Louisiana (UWNWLA) and the Nonprofit Manager of the Shreveport Financial Empowerment Center (SFEC). As Vice President, she’s responsible for the overall leadership and management of its Financial Stability impact area. Within her roles, she oversees and manages various financial empowerment programs including the Bank On Northwest Louisiana (BONWLA) initiative, the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, Louisiana’s first Financial Empowerment Center in direct partnership with the City of Shreveport, and the Shreveport Guaranteed Income Pilot program.
Rashida earned her Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing from the University of Louisiana at Monroe and is currently pursuing her MBA in Project Management. With an extensive government and public service background, she has worked for Shreveport Federal Credit Union, ReRez Market Research, and helped develop the Allie Smiles Foundation. She then began working for the City of Shreveport’s Department of Community Development in 2012 where she developed and launched the Bank On Shreveport (BONWLA) initiative. In 2015, she transitioned to UWNWLA to expand the BONWLA initiative and create new financial stability programs.
Fulfilling her commitment to serve others, Rashida is the President of the Rotary Club of South Shreveport, Co-Chair of Louisiana Asset Funders Network’s Steering Committee, a member of Cadence Bank’s CRA Advisory Council, Northwest Louisiana Re-Entry Coalition, and the Young Professionals Initiative (YPI). She is also a graduate of the 2017 Greater Shreveport Leadership Program, a 2013 graduate of LANO’s Leadership Program, and is actively involved with various community organizations throughout Northwest Louisiana. She was an honoree of Shreveport-Bossier’s 2018 Class of Forty Under 40 and the 1st recipient of the Nonprofit Citizen of the Year for the 2019 Minority Business Opportunity Awards through the Greater Shreveport Chamber of Commerce.
Rashida lives her life by the words of Maya Angelou, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”