Portland Community College | Portland, Oregon

Emma Kallaway selected to lead PCC’s legislative strategy

Photos and story by James Hill

Portland Community College has announced that Emma Kallaway is the institution’s new government relations manager.

In her role, Kallaway will lead the government relations functions of the college, planning and executing a government affairs strategy that advances PCC’s mission and goals with local, regional, state, and federal elected officials.

“We are thrilled to have Emma joining our team at PCC,” said Rob Wagner, associate vice president for College Advancement. “Her knowledge of the legislative and higher education processes in Oregon, and her passion for our students will be an enormous asset to PCC and its partners in the state.”

Kallaway of North Portland was recently the deputy campaign manager for Our Oregon: Vote Yes on Measure 97 Campaign, where she helped develop strategies to execute the campaign’s plan and advised the senior political team on engaging business leaders, racial equity organizations, and major donors. In her role, she oversaw research, finance and data as well as the campaign’s 15-person field team during the petition phase, collecting 130,000 signatures that qualified Measure 97 for the Oregon ballot. Kallaway also helped coordinate and support national fundraising surrogates to raise $12 million for the measure.

Before Measure 97, Kallaway served as executive director for the Oregon Student Association (OSA) from 2013 to 2015 where she led the second-largest electoral engagement program in the nation and largest electoral engagement program in Oregon’s history, registering 55,311 students to vote in the 2014 election. During this time, she was the chief operations officer for the Oregon Student Foundation.

At the University of Oregon, she earned bachelor’s degrees in Business Administration from the Lundquist College of Business, and in Liberal Arts from the Robert D. Clark Honors College. In 2013, Kallaway was part of Emerge Oregon, which is a female candidate leadership program that selects 30 women every year. In the summer of 2008, she took part in a language immersion program at the Universitá di Perugia in Italy.