Libby Cohen, Ph.D.

Dr. Libby Cohen serves as executive director of Raise Your Hand Texas. She joined Raise Your Hand Texas in 2018 to create the organization’s statewide grassroots advocacy network. In 2019, her vision for a full-time team to help Texans successfully engage with the state legislature led to the creation of Raise Your Hand’s regional advocacy team. As one of the largest full-time grassroots advocacy teams in the state, the regional advocacy team brings thousands of Texans deeper into the electoral and legislative processes that shape our public schools. Since joining the organization, Dr. Cohen has also spearheaded the creation of numerous Raise Your Hand Texas campaigns and initiatives, including public education candidate forums; the Measure What Matters campaign for accountability reform; and the Trustee Advocates Program.

Before joining Raise Your Hand Texas, Dr. Cohen honed her advocacy skills as a community organizer with the Industrial Areas Foundation, the nation’s oldest and largest community organizing network. As an organizer with the network’s Baltimore affiliate, Dr. Cohen worked alongside community leaders to increase school funding, create jobs for returning citizens, build infrastructure in under-resourced neighborhoods, and improve police-community relations.

She is a Rhodes scholar and holds a doctorate in history and a master’s degree in economic and social history from the University of Oxford. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English and public policy at the University of North Carolina, where she was a Morehead-Cain scholar.

A sixth-generation Texan with family roots in East Texas, she lives in Austin with her husband and their two young children.