Hilary O. Shelton

Hilary O. Shelton, presently serves as the Senior Vice President for Policy and Advocacy / Director to the NAACP’s Washington Bureau for over 2 decades. The Washington Bureau is the Federal legislative and national public policy division of the over 500,000- member, 2,200-membership unit, national civil rights organization. In this capacity, Hilary is responsible for advocating the federal public policy issue agenda of the oldest, largest, and most widely recognized grassroots based civil rights organization in the United States to the U.S. Government. Hilary’s government affairs portfolio includes crucial issues such as affirmative action, equal employment protection, access to quality education, stopping gun violence, ending racial profiling, abolition of the death penalty, access to comprehensive healthcare, voting rights protection, federal sentencing and prison reform and a host of civil and human rights enforcement, expansion and protection issues. 

Hilary serves on a number of national boards of directors, national and federal advisory organizations and federal policy advocacy coalitions. 

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a family of six brothers and sisters, Hilary holds degrees in political science, communications, and legal studies from Howard University in Washington, D.C., the University of Missouri in St. Louis, and Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, respectively. He presently lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife Paula Young Shelton and their three sons, Caleb Wesley, Aaron Joshua, and Noah Otis Young Shelton.