Andrew Plumley
Chief People and Equity Officer
Andrew Plumley is Arabella’s chief people and equity officer, based in the firm’s Washington, DC office. He leads the vision and day-to-day operations of the firm’s human resources, operations, and equity and belonging (E&B) functions, including total rewards and benefits, talent acquisition, employee engagement and retention, office management, learning and development, and operations. In this role, Andrew implements the firmwide strategy for supporting Arabella’s people and cultivating an equitable and inclusive culture. He works to build a culture of accountability, transparency, and continuous improvement within the people, equity and belonging, and operations functions, fostering high-performance teams and driving excellence in service delivery. Andrew’s vision for the people function includes infusing adaptability, problem-solving, curiosity, collaboration, transparency, and deep care for our people into everything we do.
Prior to assuming the chief people and equity officer role, Arabella served the firm as its head of diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this role, he drew upon his expertise in facilitation and transformational change to lead the firm’s E&B initiatives. Andrew is responsible for building out the firm’s newly created Equity and Belonging function, creating and managing the firm’s E&B strategy, coordinating cross-team efforts to reach company and team equity goals, and strengthening Arabellans’ individual and collective capacity to engage in equity-related work, both internally and with clients. A systems entrepreneur at heart, he is committed to creating lasting systems change for the communities he works with and supports.
Prior to joining Arabella, Andrew was the senior director of equity and culture at the American Alliance of Museums. In that role, he oversaw the organization’s internal diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) work as well as its field-wide Facing Change Initiative, funded by the Ford Foundation, Walton Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. Andrew also served as the director of Equity in the Center (EiC), a nonprofit organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems in the social sector to center and build a culture of racial equity. He has worked in both public-sector and private-sector consulting throughout his career, with focus areas including higher education, strategic planning, project management, change management, and environmental and social sustainability integration.
In addition to his work at Arabella, Andrew currently serves as a Young Black and Giving Back Institute board chair, board treasurer at Equity in the Center, treasurer for the Committee to Elect Jeanne Lewis for DC City Council, board vice chair for Adventure Theater, and as an American Express N-Gen Fellow. He holds a BA in philosophy from Middlebury College and an MBA with a focus in social and environmental sustainability from the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business.