Our Team

Donnisha Barnes is the Program Strategy & Partnerships Operations Manager at DC CAP Scholars (formerly the DC College Access Program), where she has dedicated the past 15 years to advancing college access, student success, and postsecondary opportunity for Washington, DC students. As both a DC CAP scholarship alumna and a graduate of Eastern Senior High School in Washington, DC, she brings a deeply personal understanding of the power of access, guidance, and financial support in shaping a student’s future.

Over the course of her tenure at DC CAP, Donnisha has held multiple roles of increasing responsibility, including Retention Administrative Coordinator, College Retention Advisor, Student Success Manager, and Program Strategy & Partnerships Operations Manager. Across these roles, she has built broad expertise in student success, scholarship administration, college retention, partnership development, program operations, financial aid support, staff onboarding, and data-informed process improvement.

Donnisha has led and contributed to a number of high-impact initiatives that support both students and organizational effectiveness. Her work has included overseeing and processing annual scholarship awards ranging from $800,000 to $1.6 million, managing a $200,000 donor-funded scholarship program, maintaining and analyzing thousands of student records, supporting staff training and onboarding, and helping strengthen systems that improve service delivery for students, families, and institutional partners. She has also played an important role in student advising, event and outreach coordination, internship and college representative program support, and cross-functional operational planning.

In recent years, her work has expanded to include program strategy and partnerships operations, including scholarship and stipend administration, event coordination, partner communications, and process management connected to student-facing initiatives and external engagement. Through this work, she has continued to help bridge strategy and execution in ways that advance DC CAP’s mission and strengthen the organization’s impact.

Donnisha holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Clark Atlanta University and a Master of Arts in Community Counseling from Argosy University. She is especially passionate about creating systems of support that help students not only access college, but persist, graduate, and move forward with purpose. Her lived experience, institutional knowledge, and long-standing commitment to DC students continue to shape her leadership and service.