Carolanne Sanders Lundgren, Chief Campaigns Officer at Purpose. Dignity. Action., knows it’s time for us to tell a new story about how we keep communities safe.
Carolanne believes that communities on the margins bear the most transformative answers to the question of how we build a free and just society. With this as her north star, she’s spent nearly 15 years helping people move from contemplation to action in response to our most intractable social issues–those of public health and safety.
Carolanne first came to PDA as a volunteer organizer for the #YestoSCS campaign during which she helped form a regional coalition of doctors, public health professionals, and allied health workers in support of establishing the first sanctioned overdose prevention center in the United States. Through the efforts of Carolanne and many others, #YestoSCS shifted local and national conversations around drug use and addiction–-helping many people visualize, for the first time, an end to the War on Drugs and seek real pathways to healing and community care.
Prior to joining PDA, Carolanne stewarded relationships with elected officials at 39 cities and two tribal nations on behalf of King County’s Department of Community and Human Services, a $2.5 billion dollar health and human services agency. From 2018 to 2025, Carolanne helped implement major DCHS initiatives including expanding Seattle-King County’s pre-booking diversion program, creating a marijuana-related record expungement program, and leading strategic operations for a first-of-its-kind effort to acquire and transform 10+ hotels across 6 cities into 1,600 units of supportive housing for people experiencing homelessness.
Carolanne is a past member of the clinical faculty at the University of Washington School of Public Health where she co-wrote and facilitated the curriculum for SPH 489: Structural Racism & Public Health, a course which is now mandatory for all undergraduate students in the Public Health major.
Carolanne has a gift for cross-pollinating relationships and ideas and is committed to building a world rooted in creativity and care. Carolanne received a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Public Health in Community-Oriented Public Health Practice from the University of Washington.
Outside of PDA, Carolanne is an accomplished metalsmith and (equally accomplished) fun auntie. She is the fiercely proud spouse of a Seattle firefighter.