Olivia began her City service in 1974 when she joined the staff of Mayor Tom Bradley. She is currently the Assistant Chief Grants Administrator in the newly created City of Los Angeles Community Investment for Families Department. In August 2021, this department assumed many programs from the Housing and Community Investment Department (HCIDLA). In 2005 she joined the staff of the previous Community Development Department (CDD). During her tenure at CDD she managed staff at eight community centers, directed research and legislative advocacy and supervised the management information services branch. In the combined CDD/HCIDLA department she managed a staff of 25 assigned to the department’s Family Source System, Domestic Violence Shelter Operations, Child Passenger Safety and the federally funded Neighborhood Improvement construction projects. She manages eight staff in the unit responsible for the six (6) Commissions assigned to the department: Human Relations, Status of Women, Affordable Housing, Transgender Advisory Council, Community Action Board and Community and Family Services.
Ms. Mitchell is known for her work with young people. She began in1971, with the District Attorney’s Youth Advisory Board. In 1974, she joined the staff of Mayor Tom Bradley where she created Mayor Bradley’s Youth Advisory Council. She continued to serve under Mayor Richard Riordan and in 1995, she served as the Interim Director of the newly created Commission for Children, Youth and Their Families. She has developed and implemented leadership development programs for the best and brightest youth of our city as well as programs for the disenfranchised including foster, probation and gang involved young people. She had directly mentored over 2000 youth and, indirectly, thousands more.
Ms. Mitchell has worked at the program, administrative and policy-decision making levels to inform, encourage and engage youth and adults in the decisions affecting their lives; especially government decisions. As important is her commitment to recruit, encourage and mentor staff to provide their best service to the City’s ethnically and economically diverse constituency, especially those living in poverty and without hope.
Her influence reaches across communities to include policy appointments that currently include the County Probation Commission and the California Community Foundation’s BLOOM and Thelma Pearl Howard affiliates. Formerly, she was a member of the National Board of the Tavis Smiley Foundation, the YWCA of Greater Los Angeles, the Latino/Black Roundtable, KCET and LA Philharmonic Advisory Boards, United Way Board of Directors, and the Rosa Parks Sexual Assault Crisis Center.
This year she celebrated her 78th birthday.
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