Amber Arellano, MPP

Amber Arellano, MPP, is a public affairs executive, communications and policy strategist and award-winning journalist. Under her leadership at The Education Trust-Midwest, the organization has led major public engagement campaigns and statewide coalitions that have led to innovative systems and policy changes to better support public education, particularly on behalf of vulnerable children. In her role at the Ed Trust-Midwest, she serves on the national Education Trust’s Senior Leadership Team and oversees the Ed Trust-Midwest division’s P-12 policy and research, communications, community engagement and coalitions, and development and operations. She is widely recognized as a leading voice for non-partisan education data, research and policy expertise in Michigan. Ed Trust-Midwest serves as the backbone organization for the Michigan Partnership for Equity and Opportunity, a statewide coalition credited in 2023 with a historic legislative win that made Michigan among the nation’s first states for considering concentration of poverty in its school funding formula. In partnership with the Steelcase Foundation, Arellano also founded the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning to bring proven best practices from leading education states to Michigan’s high-poverty schools.

Previously Arellano earned national, state and regional awards including the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ Commentator of the Year award for her influential work on behalf of Michigan’s vulnerable students. She also has led impactful national and regional communications campaigns for corporate and international organizations.

Her journalistic work has included investigative work, feature writing, commentary and editorials, and beat reporting including race relations for the Detroit Free Press and education for The Detroit News. She also reported in California and Mexico.

Arellano bleeds both green and blue: She earned her Master of Public Policy at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy and her Bachelor’s in secondary education at Michigan State University. As a Rotary International Scholar, she studied at the Universidad de Guanajuato in Mexico, where she has familial roots. A proud Michigander of both Mexican and Irish-American descent, she is a first-generation college graduate. She has served on many boards and volunteers in organizations across the metropolitan Detroit region, including MANA of Detroit, the Detroit Regional Chamber Foundation and the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy Alumni Board. In her spare time, she enjoys biking, hiking, art, music, reading a good non-fiction work, throwing parties, hosting dinners, traveling and dancing in her living room with her family.