Rochelle Lee

Rochelle Lee has more than three decades of experience in the nonprofit community development and housing sectors, where she has worked on mixed-use and adaptive re-use commercial projects in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island. Rochelle’s professional history includes community organizing, grassroots partnership building, launching and working with nonprofits engaged in environmental and economic justice, civil rights, criminal justice reforms, health equity, and promoting anti-racism initiatives. Rochelle was a licensed social worker in Boston and taught in public and private high schools in Boston and Watertown, Massachusetts. More recently, she served as a high school career coordinator for the Pawtucket School District.

Rochelle’s commitment to her community includes serving on various nonprofit boards with missions to promote social and economic justice. Rochelle is a fellow of the Women’s Policy Institute of the Women’s Fund of Rhode Island and an alumna of Leadership Rhode Island. She is a founding board member of the Providence Community Library and the Knight Memorial Library Friends and past board secretary of the Rhode Island Public Transit Authority and past board president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals of Rhode Island. She served on Rhode Island’s 1691 Commission, tasked with recommending strategies to further integrate African American history into the state’s public education curriculum.

She earned a master of city and regional planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master of arts in African American studies from Boston University. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts and is an alumna of Wellesley College.

Rochelle lives in the Elmwood neighborhood of Providence and currently serves as a board member of the Rhode Island Human Rights Commission and the Providence Housing Authority. She is treasurer of the Providence City Democratic Committee. She is secretary of the board of directors for ONE Neighborhood Builders.