Sojourn Strategies is a political consulting firm that works with left-of-center social policy campaigns, left-progressive nonprofits, and research groups. It was founded by criminal justice activist and former professor Katrina L. Gamble. ¹

The firm prioritizes “building black political power” in elections and movements such as Black Lives Matter. ²

Activities

Sojourn Strategies has contributed to “election modernization reforms” in several states. Gamble specifically helped create the first national “prosecutor accountability hub,” a network of district attorneys from all over the United States seeking to change the country’s criminal justice system in the direction of greater leniency toward offenders and suspects. Sojourn Strategies boasts that this hub “laid the groundwork to elect a number of progressive prosecutors from Philadelphia to St. Louis.” ³

During the 2020 election cycle, Sojourn Strategies created a report with ThinkRubix, a left-progressive consulting firm, and the Electoral Justice Project, a subsidiary of the Movement for Black Lives (MBL) on “contemporary Black freedom movements.” Their report “found” that “contemporary Black freedom movements are a powerful tool for political engagement.” ⁴

Leadership

Sojourn Strategies was founded by Katrina L. Gamble, a political scientist and activist. Gamble received her PhD in political science from Emory University in 2005. She worked as an assistant professor at Brown University, researching the history of racial political movements in the U.S., from August 2005 until June 2011, when she left to become the political director of Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), a left-of-center 501(c)(3) organization specializing in voter mobilization. She conducted donor development, leveraged funds to state partners, and launched CPD’s Voting Rights and Democracy Program, which helped restore voting rights to almost 40,000 former prisoners. ^{5 6} She left CPD to start Sojourn Strategies in January 2016, which she has led as president since. ⁷

Gamble is an advisory board member of Civic Responsibility Project and a board member of Re:Power, a left-wing political training institution. ⁸ She is also an advisory board member of the government consultancy think tank Institute for Responsive Government (IRG). ⁹

As of July 2022, Destiney Golden was the program manager for research and communications at Sojourn. Formerly, Golden worked for an education nonprofit in Tennessee known as UnifiEd and then a voter mobilization group called Open Progress. Colline Miller was the program manager for campaigns and advocacy. Miller is a veteran of voter mobilization efforts, having traveled across the country to train nonprofits in voter registration and in benefits acquisitions for low-income people. She has worked with the Tennessee branch of the League of Women Voters in the past. ¹⁰

1. “Social Impact.” Sojourn Strategies. Accessed 1 July 2022. https://www.sojournstrategies.com/
2.  “Building Black Political Power.” Sojourn Strategies. Accessed 2 July 2022. https://www.sojournstrategies.com/building-black-political-power.
3. “Social Impact.” Sojourn Strategies. Accessed 1 July 2022. https://www.sojournstrategies.com/. Accessed 3 July 2022.
4.  “Building Black Political Power.” Sojourn Strategies. Accessed 2 July 2022. https://www.sojournstrategies.com/building-black-political-power.
5. Experience – Katrina Gamble.” LinkedIn. Accessed 1 July 2022. https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrina-gamble/details/experience/.
6. “Social Impact.” Sojourn Strategies. Accessed 1 July 2022. https://www.sojournstrategies.com/.
7.  “Experience – Katrina Gamble.” LinkedIn. Accessed 1 July 2022. https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrina-gamble/details/experience/.
8. “Experience – Katrina Gamble.” LinkedIn. Accessed 1 July 2022. https://www.linkedin.com/in/katrina-gamble/details/experience/.
9.  Home.” Institute for Responsive Government. Accessed 27 June 2022. https://web.archive.org/web/20220627164526/https://responsivegoverning.org/.
10. “Social Impact.” Sojourn Strategies. Accessed 1 July 2022. https://www.sojournstrategies.com/