Lindsay Maple

Lindsay Maple is the Deputy Director at the Possibility Lab where she oversees all of the Lab’s project teams and staff and supports the executive direction of the Lab. Lindsay is an experienced leader, strategic planner, and strong researcher, and she maintains a big picture vision of the Lab’s goals while supporting daily research efforts across community-engaged projects. She launched the Lab’s Abundance Accelerator in 2023 and has led the initiative throughout its duration. Lindsay led the development of and has advocated for the Lab’s people-centered approach to abundance, which maintains a human-centered orientation around the work that we must do in order to create more of the goods and services all Californians need to thrive. 

 

Previously, Lindsay served as the Deputy Director of Policy and Research for the California 100 initiative, where she led the research team and the California Considers deliberative democracy survey. Under her leadership and partner coordination, California 100 released nearly three dozen high-quality research reports about the history, context, and trends across California and its varied regions. She supported the development of California 100’s mega-scenarios envisioning California’s future within the next 10 and 30 years, and facilitated nearly 20 listening sessions with experts across the state related to planning for California’s future through policy reforms. 

 

She spent nearly 5 years with the California State Auditor’s Office developing actionable policy recommendations for some of California’s most critical and pressing issues. As a Senior Auditor, Lindsay led performance evaluation teams to assess the efficacy of public programs, such as the Employment Development Department’s ability to distribute unemployment benefits quickly during the pandemic. She has presented on a diverse set of findings and recommendations directly to the State’s policymakers to advocate for transparency and accountability in California’s most critical programs.

Lindsay received her MPP from UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, where she worked with the Center for Cities and Schools on public school facilities funding and teaching housing models, and she served on UC Berkeley’s Graduate Assembly. She also received a Master’s of Education from Loyola Marymount University, a BA in History from UC Santa Cruz, and previously taught middle school special education in Oakland.