Amber Woodruff is Director of Strategy and Research at the Greater Baltimore Committee, where she leads cross-sector initiatives focused on public safety, economic mobility, and workforce pathways. Her work centers on building partnerships among employers, civic leaders, and community organizations to design and advance solutions that strengthen talent pipelines, expand opportunity for Baltimore residents, and support the region’s long-term economic growth.
At GBC, Woodruff helps mobilize the business community to play an active role in addressing Baltimore’s most pressing challenges. She has led the development and relaunch of BLocal, a regional employer engagement initiative designed to strengthen local hiring pathways by organizing employers across sectors, building structured partnerships with workforce and education providers, and creating a framework for employer participation in the design and sustainment of career pathways. She also supports GBC’s public safety business engagement strategy, helping coordinate employer participation, develop communications and policy materials for business leaders, and align economic stakeholders around evidence-based violence prevention approaches.
Woodruff’s experience extends beyond GBC’s core priorities into education, talent development, and human capital strategy. She designed and facilitated professional learning communities and fellowship programs for early childhood educators, helping strengthen instructional practice, leadership development, and community-building among educators serving infants and toddlers. She also developed a strengths-based human capital assessment tool for education organizations, designed to support strategic planning and improve recruitment, hiring, and talent pipeline systems.
Earlier in her career, Woodruff led research and a multi-city listening campaign with Black pre-service teaching candidates to identify barriers to persistence and completion in teacher preparation programs. Her findings helped inform a $25 million initiative aimed at recruiting, training, and retaining Black educators in Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Dallas. She has been appointed by the Mayor of Baltimore to serve on the Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners and is a member of the Johns Hopkins Local Advisory Council. She was also featured in the Teach For America Baltimore Alumni Spotlight.