Leslie Garvin is the Executive Director of North Carolina Campus Compact, a collaborative network of 39 colleges and universities committed to educating students for civic and social responsibility, partnering with communities for positive change, and strengthening democracy. There she serves as the liaison to presidential members, develops and leads member recruitment and retention strategies, facilitates faculty engagement initiatives, builds strategic partnerships to develop and expand higher education civic engagement, and oversees day-to-day operations. Garvin is trained in multiple dialogue methods and has led the Compact’s deliberative dialogue initiative, providing National Issues Forum moderator training to hundreds of faculty, staff, students, and community partners across the state and nation. She is also a practitioner and facilitator of Theater of the Oppressed.

Since joining the Compact in 2005, she has managed many of the network’s key programs, including starting the elections and democracy initiative, serving as program director on three AmeriCorps grants that engaged more than a thousand college students in service, and  managing a three-year grant to support MLK Day of Service activities on 180 campuses across the Southeast. She served as a 2016-2017 White-Riley-Peterson Policy Fellow to study afterschool/expanded learning policy and develop and implement state-level policy projects in partnership with the North Carolina Center for Afterschool Programs and the national Afterschool Alliance. Garvin serves on the Service Year NC Advisory Council for the Institute for Emerging Issues at NC State. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the United Way of Greater High Point, where she chairs the Community Impact Committee.

Garvin has co-authored chapters in Critical Intersections in Contemporary Curriculum & Pedagogy (Info Age Publishing, 2018) and Practical Wisdom for Conducting Research on Service Learning: Pursuing Quality and Purpose (Stylus Publishing, 2019).

Garvin holds a master of social work, with a concentration in social and economic development and a specialization in management, as well as a bachelor of arts in political science, both from Washington University in St. Louis. She is also a facilitator and member of Braver Angels and is a proud AmeriCorps alum.