Emma C. Olson, M.P.H, M.S.W.

Emma Olson, MPH, MSW joined the NC Center for Health and Wellness in 2016 now serves as the Associate Director. She helps shape and implement strong internal systems and supports staff to ensure the Center moves forward with key strategic directions and successfully achieves deliverables across grants and contracts. She provides guidance into effective operations, champions ideas and initiatives, grows partnerships, coaches staff, leads strategic planning processes, and informs community-based research and evaluation projects. Specifically, she focuses on opportunities with potential to impact systems, build capacity for community-based organizations and regional/statewide networks, and address structural issues and underlying causes to improve health conditions for all.

She leads the Health Policy Research Consortium, which develops and implements a shared research agenda addressing factors that influence health in WNC. She also helps direct the Culture of Results Initiative– providing training and technical assistance to partners across the state to understand opportunities, develop strategies, measure impact, improve over time, and effectively communicate results.

Emma has nearly 20 years of experience directing the development, implementation, and evaluation efforts of a wide range of health, nutrition education and social service initiatives and projects. She has been responsible for extensive and varied programs focused on health, mental health, economic empowerment, education, and other social determinants. Emma was also a clinical social worker at an outpatient mental health clinic and a family social worker and health specialist at an early childhood center in New York City. She cares deeply about supporting access to health-related resources for all people statewide, especially those at highest risk for the poorest outcomes.

Education

• MSW & MPH – Clinical Social Work & Global Health Leadership, New York University – 2015
• BA – Rhetoric, University of California, Berkeley – 2007

Leadership Positions

• United Way of Asheville & Buncombe County–Board of Directors and Co-Chair Equity Change Team
• WNC Healthy Impact–Steering Committee Member
• Western North Carolina Pathways for Nonprofit Leadership Program–Alumnae