Dr. Donna M. Beegle inspires and educates individuals, organizations, politicians and entire communities with proven models to better outcomes for people in poverty.

Born into a migrant labor family and married at 15, Dr. Beegle is the only member of her family who has not been incarcerated. By age 24, she earned her GED and then, within 10 years, received her doctorate in Educational Leadership. She is an authentic voice from poverty, who speaks, writes and trains across the nation to break the iron cage of poverty for others through services provided by her company, Communications Across Barriers (CAB). For more than 23 years, she has traveled throughout hundreds of cities in 47 states and four countries to assist professionals with proven strategies for breaking poverty barriers. State agencies, politicians and other organizations have partnered with her to implement community-wide approaches to improving outcomes for citizens in poverty.

Dr. Beegle’s inspiring story of moving from 28 years of homelessness to achieving a doctorate and her groundbreaking work assisting people to move out of poverty have been featured in newspapers and television around the nation, including CNN and PBS. Dr. Beegle has received numerous awards (i.e. the National Speaker of the Year for the New Mexico Bar Foundation and the Oregon Ethics in Business award), and recently Portland State University’s School of Social Work Building was named in her honor.