Tony Thurmond: Building Community Relationships

California State Assembly member Tony Thurmond poses with California Attorney General Kamala Harris, who recently sponsored a truancy prevention bill.

This month, Lincoln Child Center is pleased to feature Tony Thurmond who has worked for Lincoln for four years. In his role as Senior Director of Community and Government Relations, Tony works with elected and government leaders to expand Lincoln’s service contracts and to establish community and corporate partners who can support its programs. 

Tony has developed a reputation for helping Lincoln expand existing programs and establish critically needed new ones. Tony was instrumental in helping Project Permanence expand its role in providing wraparound services to youth served by the criminal justice system. He also launched CEO Youth at Lincoln, a paid job training program that teaches entrepreneurship to teenage youth served by the foster care and probation systems.

One of Lincoln’s current areas of focus is reducing chronic absenteeism of students in Alameda County. Tony is helping Lincoln design new services and identify new revenue for training programs aimed at students in kindergarten and first grade. Lincoln is aligning its efforts with the truancy prevention work being led by California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris. Tony and the Attorney General worked together to support passage of a package of anti-truancy bills. 

Tony is a Bay Area native who lives in Richmond with his two school-age daughters. Tony comes to Lincoln with more than 20 years of nonprofit service and experience as a former city council member and school board member. Tony holds Masters degrees in Law and Social Policy and Social Services from Bryn Mawr College, a BA in Psychology from Temple University, and is a Fellow in the prestigious Annie E. Casey Children Foundation and Family Fellowship.

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