Danielle Ford

Danielle Ford lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. Her career experience includes working as a marketing strategist.[1]

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

I’m Danielle Ford, a Las Vegas native, mother, entrepreneur, marketing strategist, public speaker, and elected public servant. I currently serve as an elected member of the Nevada State Board of Education and previously served as a Clark County School District Trustee.

My path has not been traditional. I attended multiple CCSD schools and private school, earned my GED, attended trade school and community college, built businesses, and entered public service because I wanted to ask real questions, understand how decisions were being made, and hold public systems accountable to the people they are supposed to serve.

The more I lived through these systems and worked inside them, the more clearly I saw the pattern. Families do not experience cost of living, education, health care, mental health, public safety, technology, and government accountability as separate issues. They live them together. I am running for Governor because I believe Nevada needs leadership focused on people, practical problem-solving, transparency, and making government work better for the families, workers, students, and communities it serves.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

I am a Nevada-first nonpartisan candidate for Governor. I am not running to represent a party machine, donor network, or national political agenda. My campaign is built around putting people before politics, asking better questions, and making decisions based on Nevada’s needs instead of partisan talking points.Nevada’s biggest challenges are connected. Affordability, education, health care, mental health, public safety, water, energy, technology, economic development, and government accountability affect families together in real life. My platform focuses on repairing the systems Nevada families rely on every day.I bring both lived experience and elected public-service experience to this race. As a former Clark County School District Trustee and current elected member of the Nevada State Board of Education, I have worked inside public governance and seen how budgets, contracts, policies, and agency decisions affect people’s daily lives. I am known for asking hard questions, following public money, explaining complex issues clearly, and holding systems accountable.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Education and health care are deeply personal to me, but I believe AI and technology policy may be one of the most consequential public issues of our lifetime. AI can improve education, health care, government services, small businesses, accessibility, and everyday problem-solving, but only if leaders take the risks seriously before harm is already done. Nevada needs thoughtful guardrails around student data, surveillance, automated decision-making, algorithmic bias, data centers, water, energy, public contracts, and the ways technology can be used to manipulate prices or extract value from people instead of serving them.

Who do you look up to? Whose example would you like to follow, and why?

I have always admired Princess Diana for the way she used her platform to bring attention, compassion, and humanity to people who were often ignored, stigmatized, or treated as invisible. She used her empathy, courage, and proximity to power to challenge institutions and the status quo.

What characteristics or principles are most important for an elected official?

The most important principles are honesty, humility, accountability, transparency, and the willingness to ask difficult questions before decisions are made. Elected officials should be able to explain their reasoning clearly, admit when they need more information, listen to the people closest to a problem, and follow the evidence even when it is politically inconvenient. Public service should be about serving people, not protecting institutions, parties, or personal power.

What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?

The Governor’s responsibility is to lead the executive branch, appoint capable leaders, propose budgets, implement laws, coordinate agencies, respond to crises, and make decisions that affect the daily lives of Nevadans. A Governor should understand how systems connect and should be able to bring people together across agencies, regions, industries, and political identities. The job is not just to announce programs, but to make government work better, measure results honestly, and ensure public money and public power are used in the public interest.

What legacy would you like to leave?

I would like to leave Nevada with a government that is easier to understand, easier to trust, and more focused on solving real problems than winning political arguments. If I am successful, people will say that I helped make public decisions more transparent, connected systems that had been working in isolation, asked questions others were not asking, and helped build a state where families could afford to live, children were better supported, and public money was treated as belonging to the public.

What is something that has been a struggle in your life?

One of the hardest experiences my family has faced was navigating serious medical, disability, rehabilitation, and long-term care systems after a catastrophic injury in our family. That experience reinforced what I had already seen in public service: families are often forced to become case managers during the hardest moments of their lives. It deepened my commitment to building systems that communicate, coordinate, and serve people better.

Danielle Ford did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2024 Candidate Connection survey.

Campaign website

Ford’s campaign website stated the following:

If elected I will work to:

Provide oversight over Nevada’s public school districts, charter authority, and private schools

Expand early education and pre-k programs throughout all school districts

Reduce barriers for higher education throughout the state, ensuring every student graduates college and career-ready

Rethink and modify the system in a way that supports the learning styles of neurodiverse students

Empower parents to have more input and involvement at school sites

Lessen the amount of state mandates that add unnecessary workloads for all educators and school staff

Reform the teacher evaluation and student testing models to be less punitive and more whole-child focused[2]

—Danielle Ford’s campaign website (2024)[3]

Danielle Ford did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2022 Candidate Connection survey.