Erika Donalds
Erika Brynne Donalds is an American school choice activist from Florida. She leads education policy at the America First Policy Institute. Her husband, Byron Donalds, is a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Background
Donalds holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in accounting. She worked for New York investment management firm Dalton, Greiner, Hartman, Maher & Co., LLC from 2002 until 2018.Education activism
In 2013, following a dispute with administrators of her second child's public school in Naples, Donalds placed her child in a private school. She became involved in local efforts to deploy state education funds to establish a charter school, the Mason Classical Academy.Donalds was named by Florida House of Representatives Speaker Richard Corcoran to the 2017-2018 Constitution Revision Commission. Governor Ron DeSantis appointed her to the Advisory Committee on Education and Workforce Development and the Florida Gulf Coast University Board of Trustees.
Affiliations
Donalds leads education policy at the America First Policy Institute.Donalds is a visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and serves on the advisory boards of Classical Learning Test, Moms for Liberty, and the Independent Women's Forum Education Freedom Center.
In October 2025, Donalds embarked on a campus speaking tour with the Leadership Institute. Calling the U.S. education system "Wasteful, bureaucratic, monopolistic", she advocated for privatizing the student loan system and increasing the number of groups administering standardized testing.