About

Funds & Initiatives

Impact & Events

Community Resources

Donate

Meet G4GC’s Advisory Board!
First published: May 18, 2020
 

Meet G4GC’s Advisory Board

Grantmakers for Girls of Color is grateful to have the partnership and guidance of these phenomenal philanthropy leaders as we continue to strengthen our programmatic agenda and support our communities.

 
         Tynesha McHarris
          Founder and Principal, Black Harvest
          Co-founder, Black Feminist Fund
          Prachi Patankar
          Program Officer
          Foundation for a Just Society
          Leticia Peguero
        Life & Executive Coach
Leticia Peguero Coaching and Consulting
          Tia Oros Peters (Zuni)
          Chief Executive Officer
          Seventh Generation Fund for
          Indigenous Peoples
          Ada Williams Prince
          Senior Advisor
          Program Strategy and
          Investments, Pivotal Ventures
          Bré Anne Rivera
          Program Fellow
          The Black Trans Fund
          Lateefah Simon
          President
          Akonadi Foundation
          Teresa C. Younger 
          President and CEO
          Ms. Foundation for Women

 

Tynesha McHarris
Founder and Principal, Black Harvest
Co-founder, Black Feminist Fund

Tynesha is a Black Feminist that engages her work fueled by the desire to see the ideals of truth and justice actualized in the lives and conditions of every person she encounters. She brings over fifteen years of experience advocating for racial, gender and youth justice in movements, organizations, and private foundations.

She most recently designed NoVo Foundation’s portfolio for girls of color in the United States, a $90 million investment, and the first of its kind in the sector. Before joining NoVo, Tynesha served as Director of Programs at the Brooklyn Community Foundation, where she led community engagement efforts and helped the foundation design and implement its new core program strategy. She also served as director of programs at the Newark Trust for Education, a pooled fund focused on education justice and school innovation.

Tynesha’s roots are in her early work leading programs for young people. As a practitioner, she has worked closely with young people who’ve experienced criminalization & incarceration and has also led work for survivors of gender-based violence. Tynesha is now the founder and principal of Black Harvest, a consulting firm working with movement leaders and philanthropy to bolster work living at the intersections of state and gender based violence. She is also a co-founder of the Black Feminist Feminist Fund, a vehicle to move resources to Black Feminist movements around the world.

 

Prachi Patankar
Program Officer
Foundation for a Just Society

Prachi Patankar currently leads the South and Southeast Asia portfolio at the Foundation for a Just Society. Born and raised in rural India, Prachi was raised by a freedom-fighter grandmother and parents deeply involved in anti-caste, feminist, and peasant movements. 

Over two decades in New York City, she has been an activist, educator, grantmaker, and writer involved in social movements which link the local and the global, police brutality and war, migration and militarization, race and caste, women of color feminism, and global gender justice. She most recently served as the program director for social justice at the J.M. Kaplan Fund, leading grantmaking for criminal justice reform, immigrant rights, and locally-led work in Brownsville, Brooklyn. Prior to that, she was the senior program officer at Brooklyn Community Foundation, where she helped create and implement grant programs through a racial justice lens.

She currently serves on the board of CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities and co-leads the Pooled Fund Advisory Group at Philanthropy Advancing Women’s Human Rights (PAWHR). Through work with the South Asia Solidarity Initiative and the Afghan Women’s Mission, she has been involved in creative projects to link social justice movements between the United States and Asia. She has been featured in media including the Guardian, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now and Women’s Studies Quarterly. 

Prachi believes in the vital power of intersectional and international visions and strategies, which resonate across Dalit rights and Black lives, migrant justice and gender justice, to build bottom-up change from the local to the global.

 

Leticia Peguero
Life & Executive Coach
Leticia Peguero Coaching and Consulting

Leticia Peguero is a consultant, philanthropic advisor and coach for women, people of color, and organizations through her company Leticia Peguero Coaching and Consulting.

Before consulting, Leticia spent years in the philanthropic sector. Most recently, Leticia served as Vice President of Programs at the Nathan Cummings Foundation. She developed strategies grounded in principles of social and racial justice that are nimble, responsive, and reflective of the integrated and complex nature of social change. She was a partner to the CEO and the board in achieving NCF’s vision of a best-in-class social justice philanthropy that is integrated and intersectional in its approaches and fully aligned in its culture, operations, and systems. Leticia led the organization through a refining of their values, vision and helped NCF adopt long term outcomes that are aligned with achieving racial, economic and environmental justice.

In her previous role as Executive Director of the Andrus Family Fund (AFF), she was at the forefront of the national conversation around youth justice reform and narrative change surrounding young people of color. Under her leadership, the AFF and the Surdna Foundation developed innovative tools and curricula to effectively engage next generation family philanthropists in meaningful conversations and experiences related to race, class, and privilege.

Before joining AFF, Leticia was the Regional Vice President at the Posse Foundation, where she managed Posse sites in Los Angeles, Boston, and New Orleans, in addition to establishing its newest location at the time in Houston, Texas. Prior to Posse, Leticia spent five years as Deputy Director of the Local Funding Partnerships program, one of the hallmark programs of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where she developed strategy and worked to identify and support innovative community based models that were in service of creating historically marginalized communities.  

Outside of her professional role, Leticia works closely with a Latinx-run arts organization, Areytos Performance Works, which fuses Afro-Caribbean dance forms with contemporary dance and exemplifies the power of the arts as a tool for advancing social justice, particularly for those whose voices have been dampened by oppression and structural racism.

Leticia is a 2008 National Urban Fellow, one of the country’s top leadership development programs. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Fordham University and graduated with honors from the Marxe School of Public Affairs with a Master of Public Administration. She is also a Professional Certified Coach and runs a life and executive coaching practice.

 

Tia Oros Peters (Zuni)
Chief Executive Officer
Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples

Tia Oros Peters (Zuni) is the Chief Executive Officer of Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, which is an identity-based Native philanthropic, advocacy, and leadership organization that supports community generated strategies for Native Peoples’ cultural revitalization, movement building, self-determination, and Re-Indigenization. 

She is a Co-founder of the Global Indigenous Women’s Caucus, a board member of the Proteus Fund, and of Tools & Tiaras; President of Red Deer Center, and an advisor to Grantmakers for Girls of Color.

Tia has also served on the board of directors of Native Americans in Philanthropy; the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media; Resist Fund, and on the advisory boards of the A:shiwi A:wan Museum & Heritage Center, Pueblo of Zuni; the Women’s Building of New York; and Youth United for Community Action. Tia is mother and grandmother, writer, organizer, and cultural artist who has earned a BA in Law & Society from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles.

 

 

Ada Williams Prince
Senior Advisor, Program Strategy and Investments,
Pivotal Ventures

Ada Williams Prince is an established thought leader at the intersection of philanthropy, equity and global economic development. As a senior advisor for program strategy and investment at Pivotal Ventures, founded by Melinda Gates, she directs high level engagement and strategies to advance adolescent mental health (globally and domestically), and accelerate the power and influence women and girls of color.

Ada brings over 20 years of experience working on social impact globally and domestically. She has served as a Program Officer for the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Director of Special Projects for OneAmerica, and Senior Advocacy Officer at the Women’s Refugee Commission and a number of other senior program positions. She’s held international posts with the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Survivors in Brussels, Save the Children in London, and on field missions with Refugees International, and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at USAID.

Ada has served as a board member for several organizations including, Crisis Text Line, Neighborhood House and the Refugee Women’s Alliance in Seattle, and chair of the board of directors of Wandsworth Women’s Aid UK, a domestic violence shelter. Currently she serves on the board of PAI (a global reproductive health organization) and the Women’s Funding Network.

She has spent her career fighting for the rights of global women, girls and families everywhere.

Ada holds a BA and MA degrees from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT and the University of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England. She and her family live in Seattle.

 

 

Bré Anne Rivera
Program Fellow
The Black Trans Fund

Bré Rivera lives her life boldly and unapologetically advocates for issues most impacting the lives of Black trans people. She is the Founder and Program Fellow of the Black Trans Fund, an incubated fund of the Groundswell Fund that is rooted in her experience as a former executive director of an under-resourced grassroots organization, and her commitment to supporting abundance within Black trans movements. 

Before joining the Groundswell Fund team, Bré worked as a research assistant at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, and as an HIV intervention specialist at Wayne State University School of Medicine and Detroit Medical Center. 

Bré lives in New Mexico with her partner and spends her free time hiking in the Sandia mountains. She is an active board member of Positive Women’s Network-USA, the Transgender Resource Center of New Mexico, Third Wave Fund, and Grantmakers for Girls of Color.

 

 

Lateefah Simon
President
Akonadi Foundation

Lateefah Simon is a nationally recognized advocate for civil rights and racial justice. She has been the President of Akonadi Foundation since 2016. That same year—driven by Oscar Grant’s death—she was elected to the Bay Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors and served as President. Since 2015, Lateefah also has served as a member of the Board of Trustees for the California State University, the nation’s largest public university system, and state officials often turn to her for strategic advice on policy matters related to racial justice. 

Lateefah previously served as Program Director at the Rosenberg Foundation, where she launched the Leading Edge Fund to seed, incubate, and accelerate bold ideas from the next generation of progressive movement leaders in California. She also held the position of Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, successfully launching community-based initiatives, such as the Second Chance Legal Services Clinic. Lateefah spearheaded San Francisco’s first reentry anti-recidivism youth services division under the then-District Attorney Kamala Harris leadership. Before serving in this role, Lateefah became—at the age of 19—the Executive Director of the Center for Young Women’s Development (now named the Young Women’s Freedom Center), a position she held for 11 years.

Lateefah received the MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award in 2003, making her the youngest woman to receive the award —in recognition of her work as Executive Director of the Young Women’s Freedom Center. Lateefah’s other numerous awards include the California State Assembly’s “Woman of the Year,”; the Jefferson Award for Extraordinary Public Service, and Inside Philanthropy’s “Most Promising New Foundation President” (2018). Lateefah’s additional awards include those from the Ford Foundation, the National Organization for Women, Lifetime Television, and O Magazine.

She has been featured in SF Chronicle, SF Business Times, KQED, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Philanthropy News Digest, Inside Philanthropy, Associated Press, CNN, ABC News, and many more media outlets.

 

 

Teresa C. Younger
President and CEO
Ms. Foundation for Women

Teresa C. Younger is an activist, advocate, renowned public-speaker, organizational strategist, and a proven leader in the philanthropic and policy sectors. Having spent over 20 years on the frontlines of some of the most critical battles for comprehensive equity and the elimination of institutionalized oppression, she now serves as the President and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women.

Prior to joining the Ms. Foundation for Women, Younger served as the executive director of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and as executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut — the first African American and the first woman to hold that position.

Younger is a thought leader at the critical intersections of gender and race. Within the philanthropic sector she serves on initiatives to shape and change the narrative of women and girls, including Grantmakers for Girls of Color, Funders for Reproductive Equity, Philanthropy New York and Black Funders for Social Justice. Additionally, Younger serves on a number of boards including the Ethel Walker School and Essie Justice Group.

She has appeared on MSNBC’s UP with David Gura, NBC News, NPR Radio, Elle Magazine, Cosmopolitan, SiriusXM, and in USA Today, AP, Rewire, BadassWomenLeaders.com podcast and the New York Times.

Younger is a graduate of the University of North Dakota and in 2018 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in Humanities from the University of New Haven. She is also a proud lifetime Girl Scout and Gold Award recipient.