About Donna Davis

Lifelong Educator, Community College Champion.

Donna’s passion for education started in kindergarten when she decided she wanted to become a teacher. She is a first-generation college graduate with a  degree in Health Education from the College at Brockport, State University of New York (SUNY Brockport). After graduation, she married her college sweetheart, an Air Force officer, and traveled the world as a military spouse for 23 years. Moving every few years with the military offered a variety of different education focused experiences for Donna. She taught reading improvement to airmen for the community college on George Air Force Base in Southern California, taught preschool on Davis Monthan-Tucson Air Force Base, and taught English to Yemeni military personnel; which led to her becoming the Community Liaison Officer for the American Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen.

Donna moved to Phoenix in 1990 from Yemen with her husband and three children. Since then, she has had a variety of experiences in the nonprofit arena which include coordinating a youth employment program, fundraising for the Future Farmers of America (FFA), and working for the last 13 years for a statewide nonprofit education advocacy group. In 2015, Donna was presented with the Phoenix Champion for Children award from Children’s Action Alliance recognizing her work to create a better world for Arizona children and their families. Donna currently chairs the Governor’s Commission of Service and Volunteerism and is a graduate of Leadership West, Class 3. She was also one of only fifteen people selected to be in in last year’s 2021 rural leadership development program - Project CENTRL, Class 29. This is a competitively selected, twelve-month experiential-learning leadership development program designed to use leadership skills to educate the community on the issues facing rural Arizona.

Donna knows the West Valley’s economy is growing rapidly and employers desperately need appropriately trained employees to fill their positions. Electing Donna for the Maricopa County Community Colleges Governing Board will allow her to use her lifelong expertise in the field of education and her passion for public education to promote the Maricopa Community College systems to improve Arizona’s economy and thereby better our collective future and improve the lives of our students and their families.