Alisa Orduña, PhD, is a practitioner, policy analyst, collaborator and thought leader in homelessness services and system change. It is her life’s mission to re-imagine neighborhoods as beloved communities where residents of all diversity have a sense of belonging and resources to thrive. During her career, Alisa has become a trusted community engagement facilitator, working to build bridges and disrupt traditional power relationships to support authentic action between impacted communities and funders/policymakers, and repair intra-relations between cities and counties in the development of homelessness strategies. She has served community in the public and nonprofit sectors in Philadelphia, PA; Los Angeles, CA; and Santa Monica, CA.

In 2020, Alisa founded Florence Aliese Advancement Network. LLC, to work with local governments and philanthropic organizations across the country on the development of programs and policies in the area of homelessness and adjacent systems. In this capacity, she has advanced her vision of beloved community working on projects to improve life conditions for people experiencing and at-risk of homelessness in Skid Row, Los Angeles; South Los Angeles, CA; Sacramento, CA; Montgomery County, PA, and Suburban Denver (Englewood, Sheridan, and Littleton),CO. Dr. Alisa is an adjunct faculty at the University of Southern California where she teaches a graduate seminar on Social Justice and Santa Monica College where she serves as lead faculty for the Homeless Service Work Certificate program, preparing the next generation of the homelessness workforce.

Dr. Orduña is a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana (BA-English), the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (MPIA- Social and Economic Development), and Pacifica Graduate Institute (PhD and MA-Depth Psychology with a specialization in Community, Liberation, Indigenous, and Eco-Psychology). Her dissertation, Òṣun Consciousness: Unearthing Anti-Black Biases in the Homeless System Soul as reflected in the Sacred Histories of the African American Experience introduced an Afro-Feminine Indigenous approach to understanding and resolve the complex social phenomenon of homelessness and its impact on African Americans in the United States.

A writer and lover of the literary arts, Dr. Alisa is also the Chief Curator for Callie Rose Literary Arts – a community-based arts organization, and is the author of Oshun’s Calabash, Dancing Across Cuba into the Memory of the Embodied African Soul & Finding Home and Unearthing the Feminine. She is a contributing author to Seeing in the Dark: Wisdom Works by Black Women in Depth-Psychology and co-author to The Urgency of Now: State of Black Homelessness in America in The Covenant with Black America, 20 Years Later.

Alisa volunteers in the community, sitting on the board of directors for LA Commons and Confluence Rising (formerly CCEJ) She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Inc. - Century City Alumnae Chapter, American Psychological Association, and the Society for Community Research and Action.