Ariel Amaru

Ariel Amaru (she/her) is a Senior Facilitator and Coach at Project Shema, where she leads trainings and supports participants in navigating complex conversations on identity, belonging, and antisemitism with compassion and groundedness.

Most recently, Ariel served as the State Policy Manager at the National Women’s Law Center, where she managed the State Gender Policy Collective — a community and resource hub supporting state legislators and advocates advancing gender justice across the country.

Across her career, Ariel has worked at the intersection of law, public policy, and community accountability. Her career experience spans women’s rights–centered public policy, compliance and governance work within a biotech research institute, and corporate health care law.

Ariel holds a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies with honors from The George Washington University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Colorado. Her undergraduate thesis on Black women’s experiences of domestic violence was awarded the department's Outstanding Research of the Year. During law school, she led both the Black and Jewish Law Students Associations.

Ariel lives in Escondido, CA with her partner and their dog, and finds joy in cooking elaborate meals, obsessing over film, and accumulating more books than she can reasonably read.