Nikki McKinney

Senior Advisor for Policy and Public Affairs

Nikki McKinney is the Policy Director at Democracy Forward.

Nikki has worked for nearly two decades on the Hill and in the Executive Branch. She joins Democracy Forward after serving four years as Associate Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Labor. Before joining the Biden-Harris Administration, she was Labor Policy Director on the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pension for Ranking Member Patty Murray (D-WA).

She is a teacher by training, having taught high school social studies in public schools in Delaware and Virginia. Her first job after leaving the classroom was as a Legislative Assistant for Senator Susan M. Collins, where she handled Education, Labor, and Native American Affairs for the Maine Republican. 

She joined the Obama Administration’s Labor Department’s Office of Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs in 2010, eventually working her way up to Deputy Assistant Secretary.

She returned to a focus on education policy in January 2017 and joined a small DC-based nonprofit, the Alliance for Excellent Education, as Director of Policy Development and Federal Government Relations, until returning to the Hill and working on the HELP Committee in 2018.

Nikki earned a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science Education from the University of Delaware and a Master of Arts in Education Policy Studies from the George Washington University. She lives in Virginia with her daughter, Paisley.