Meet Laura Bellis

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Laura Bellis never stops. Day after day, she works for Tulsa as a nonprofit leader, community organizer, educator, and mentor, absorbed in the issues that really matter: public health, education, social policy, and the economy.

She now serves as Executive Director of an expanding nonprofit, focused on healthcare access and contraception in Tulsa County. Within her first six years as leader of the team, Laura has built a powerful agency, strategically attentive to clinical quality. She understands the effectiveness of peer persuasion and the change that comes when friends talk to friends. And she pulls together data to help everyone with decision-making. We can’t be effective without the facts.

In addition to her work, Laura is deeply involved in the community. She served as a mayor-appointed member on the City of Tulsa’s Human Rights Commission from 2017 forward, and rose to vice chair in 2018. For two years after that, she served as chair, leading the group to a new level of effectiveness. Laura knows what it takes to bring people to consensus.

Laura has worked closely since 2015 with city leaders, including the mayor’s office and the city council, on a wide variety of policy efforts. This experience gives Laura the familiarity she needs to get to work on day one.

In March of 2020, Laura co-founded Save Our State: Oklahomans United. That was a 50,000-person grassroots organization that worked to protect Oklahomans from the pandemic and put reasonable and effective policies in place. She has focused on municipal policy work since 2015, concentrating on inclusivity, public safety, accessibility, and economic opportunity.

After working five years in our public schools, Laura was a founding member of the Greater Tulsa Teach For America Alumni Board, eventually leading as chair of the organization. She also worked on the regional Teach For America Board. From the very start, she kept her eye on honoring career teachers and making sure that Teach for America did not devalue professional educators. 

Laura is now a board member of the Oklahoma Women’s Alliance, a statewide gender equity organization, and serves on the board’s advocacy committee.  Laura also volunteers her time for the Tulsa Area United Way, serving on a workforce development Community Investment Panel. She sees local job creation as Job Number One for city officials. She has also volunteered for a number of local campaigns to make sure that policy and outreach are aligned with these goals.

All of this has resulted in public recognition. In 2019, she received the Rev. Len Busch Social Justice Award from Langston University. The same year she was recognized as an Achiever Under 40 by the Oklahoma Journal of Record. In 2018 she was listed by NextGen Oklahoma as one of the NextGen Achievers Under 30. 

In her free time Laura fulfills her inner wonk by watching city council committee meetings. She also reads side-by-side with her husband, Stewart, and both of them spend time with their new baby, Shoshana. 

Laura is running for Tulsa City Council, District 4 to work alongside everyone in our community. You can trust her to build a brighter future for the city we love—one where every single Tulsan can thrive.