Donalds worked for New York investment management firm Dalton, Greiner, Hartman, Maher & Co., LLC (DGHM) from 2002 until 2018.
Education activism In 2013, following a dispute with administrators of her second child's
public school in Naples, Donalds placed her child in a
private school. She became involved in local efforts (via the group Parents ROCK) to deploy state education funds to establish a
charter school, the Mason Classical Academy. Donalds was named by
Florida House of Representatives Speaker
Richard Corcoran to the 2017-2018 Constitution Revision Commission. Governor
Ron DeSantis appointed her to the Advisory Committee on Education and Workforce Development and the
Florida Gulf Coast University Board of Trustees. In 2017, Donalds founded OptimaEd, a company that provides management support for several classical charter schools in Florida. Donalds currently leads education policy at the
America First Policy Institute.. She is also a visiting fellow at
The Heritage Foundation and serves on the advisory boards of Classical Learning Test,
Moms for Liberty, and the
Independent Women's Forum Education Freedom Center. In October 2025, Donalds embarked on a campus speaking tour with the
Leadership Institute. Calling the U.S. education system "Wasteful, bureaucratic, monopolistic", she advocated for privatizing the student loan system and increasing the number of groups administering standardized testing. ==Personal life==