Mariko Lockhart

Mariko Lockhart has served in numerous leadership roles at the City of Seattle and youth-serving nonprofits. As the Director of the Seattle Office for Civil Rights from 2018 – 2021, she led the organization during the COVID pandemic and the racial justice reckoning following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. The Seattle Office for Civil Rights coordinates the Race and Social Justice Initiative, the City of Seattle’s effort to end institutional racism in every aspect of government and works to advance race and social justice through its policy work with municipal elected officials. It also supports four volunteer commissions: LGBTQ Commission, Women’s Commission, Human Rights Commission, and the Disability Commission. SOCR is also responsible for enforcement of federal and anti-discrimination laws, along with Seattle’s All-gender Restroom Ordinance, the Ban on Providing Conversion Therapy to Minors, and the Fair Chance Housing Ordinance.

Mariko has also served as Deputy Director in the Seattle Department of Education and Early Learning where she was responsible for the overall operations management of the Early Learning, K12/Postsecondary, Policy, Performance & Evaluation, and Communications teams. The department focuses on closing opportunity gaps for children and youth farthest from educational justice.

Mariko’s first governmental leadership role at the City of Seattle was as Director of the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative for the City of Seattle, when she led a community-based, multi-sector, collaborative effort to reduce youth violence by providing a network of supportive services to approximately 1,500 youth in the city’s most impacted neighborhoods.

Before coming to Seattle, Mariko served as a President & State Director of Communities In Schools of New Jersey where she was responsible for the management and operations of the state affiliate of the nation’s largest organization dedicated to keeping kids in school and helping them succeed in life. During her tenure at CISNJ, she established four independent affiliate organizations in high-needs school districts to engage public and private sector partners to channel critical supportive resources to students Pre-K – 12.

Mariko has extensive experience in working with diverse communities.  She coordinated the broad-based citywide public planning effort to set education goals for the City of Newark’s successful application for federal designation as an Enterprise Community. In the nonprofit youth development field, Mariko also worked at the Aspen Institute’s Forum for Community Solutions on a national effort to prepare young people who are out of work and out of school for employment opportunities with a focus on those provided by a corporate coalition of more than 50 U.S.-based companies.

Mariko is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University and holds a Master’s in Public Administration from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.