Sherry Riva

Affiliation: Senior Advisor for Economic Mobility and Opportunity, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell Founder, Compass Working Capital
Current term: Jan. 2023 – Aug. 2026
Board member since: 2023

Sherry is a Senior Advisor for Economic Mobility and Opportunity to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. In this capacity, she is responsible for supporting the development of a coordinated strategy to leverage the tools of the office to advance economic mobility for residents across the Commonwealth, especially for families and communities at the intersection of poverty and structural racism.

Prior to joining Attorney General Campbell’s office, Sherry founded and served as the Chief Executive Officer for 17 years of Compass Working Capital (“Compass”). In 2005, she launched Compass with an initial cohort of ten families in Roxbury, MA and grew the organization to become a national nonprofit organization that is working to end asset poverty for families with low incomes and to narrow the racial and gender wealth divides.

Under Sherry's leadership, Compass launched and expanded an innovative asset-building model for the Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program, an employment and savings program for families who receive federal housing assistance. The first model of its kind in the country, the Compass FSS program has attracted national attention as a scalable, evidence-based model to promote economic mobility and financial security for families with low incomes.

Sherry founded Compass after more than a decade working with various direct service organizations, including several years as the Executive Director of a transitional housing shelter for women in Seattle, WA. During this time, Sherry observed first-hand the cycle of poverty that traps many women and their families. These experiences shaped Sherry’s vision for and commitment to building an organization that invests in and partners with families to build assets as a pathway out of poverty.

Sherry received an A.B. from Princeton University, an MPP from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and a Master's in Philosophy (Ecumenics) from Trinity College Dublin.