Starting as a public school teacher in East New York, Brooklyn, Jill Gottfred Sohoni has been working in the social impact space in Illinois and New York City for the past 17 years.

She has a deep belief that people directly impacted by inequities, alongside values-driven non-profit leaders and public officials, are best equipped to develop solutions to our most pressing social injustices.

Prior to founding Circle Root Collaborative, Jill served as Director of Community Engagement at Advance Illinois, where she built out a strong and diverse statewide coalition of stakeholders who actively advocate for policy changes to close the opportunity gap and graduate all students ready for college and careers. Prior to Advance, Jill served as the Director of Regional Impact, Illinois & Northwest Indiana for Leadership for Educational Equity (LEE), a nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering educators to grow as leaders in their communities and help build the movement for educational equity through collective action and elected leadership. Jill also served as the Senior Manager of Legislative Affairs at the Illinois Network of Charter Schools (INCS), where she played a key role on the INCS Government Affairs Leadership team in engaging parents and educators to push for strong education policies at the district and state levels. She specializes in organizing key stakeholders around educational equity issues; leadership development programming and coaching; facilitating meetings and trainings, and strategizing issue campaigns around social equity issues.

Jill graduated cum laude from New York Law School, is a trained restorative justice peace circle keeper, holds a bachelor's degree in Social Work and Criminal Justice from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an M.S. in Childhood Education from Pace University.

She lives in Oak Park, IL with her husband, Aneesh, and two kids Naya (6) and Naveen (4).