2023 New Grantmakers Institute: Grantmaking for the 21st Century

Jamie Allison leads the Walter & Elise Haas Fund in partnership with trustees, ensuring our work expresses our values, resonates with community, and catalyzes the field. She focuses on organizational leadership, strategy, and governance. Her top priorities are to ensure that the Fund’s staff thrive in their roles and that our practices and grantmaking advance liberation and community transformation. Jamie’s 20 plus years in philanthropy combined with experience in the public sector and local government enables her to understand how these systems can be leveraged to make real change. Every day, she is inspired by the community leaders who endeavor to dream and make real a more just society by widening the circle of care to include all of us.

Jamie was born and raised in Chattanooga, TN but has called San Francisco home for more than 20 years. She is always ready for adventure. When she is not working, you can find her at music and film festivals, soccer matches, or awaiting a flight at the airport. It’s not a surprise then, that her favorite word in the English language is peripatetic, which means traveling from place to place, because she likes to travel, and also because p is her favorite letter.

Meaghan Calcari Campbell, Program Officer, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Meaghan works to promote the protection and resilience of Canadian ocean ecosystems and coastal communities. Previously, she worked on community-based conservation and economic development projects in the Philippines and Indonesia at Conservation International. She currently chairs the Environment Funders Canada Oceans Collaborative and was past chair of the Biodiversity Funders Group funder collaborative. She served as board secretary for both Environment Funders Canada and the Environmental Grantmakers Association. Meaghan received her B.S. in environmental science and psychology from the University of Notre Dame, Master of Environmental Management from Duke University, and M.B.A. in community economic development from Cape Breton University.

As Executive Director, Angie collaborates with the board, supports the team, and aligns Skyline’s practices with the foundation’s vision and values.

Angie has a Master of Public Policy from UC Berkeley and a Bachelor of Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard University. Most recently, she was Director of Programs at the Libra Foundation, where she managed grantmaking, communications, and funder organizing to shift resources and build power in communities that experience the greatest impacts of systemic oppression. Prior, Angie held grantmaking roles at multiple foundations and co-founded and led a national funder collaborative. She has volunteered with nonprofit and philanthropic organizations locally and nationally, and she currently serves on the board of Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN). Before working in philanthropy, Angie was a fundraiser for a community-based organization.

A Bay Area local, Angie loves the outdoors, and she is happiest on a foggy beach or surrounded by tall trees. She lives in San Francisco with her family.

Cecilia Chen is the Chief Strategy Officer and Vice President of Programs at Akonadi Foundation, where she oversees strategy development across Akonadi’s program areas and implementation of Akonadi’s five-year initiative, All in For Oakland. 

Before joining Akonadi, Cecilia was the Public Policy Director at Northern California Grantmakers. She built the association’s policy advocacy infrastructure and led advocacy to protect immigrant rights, ensure an accurate census, and fight for equitable tax reform. Cecilia also served as a Deputy Attorney General at the California Attorney General’s Office, advancing the Attorney General’s policy priorities around criminal justice reform and childhood trauma. Cecilia was previously the Associate Director of Policy at the Center for Youth Wellness, where she led statewide efforts to prevent and address childhood adversity and the impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on children’s health. She was also the 2011-2013 Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Fellow at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area. Cecilia graduated from Tufts University and received her J.D. from Boston College Law School. 

A Bay Area native, Cecilia lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter and fur baby Sherlock. In addition to being an unabashed dessert lover (especially ice cream), Cecilia enjoys exploring the Bay Area and trekking internationally. 

Cecilia can be reached at Cecilia [at] akonadi.org

Raymond Colmenar is the new president of Akonadi Foundation. He comes to Akonadi Foundation from The California Endowment, where he spent 16 years playing various leadership roles that gave him hands-on experience in strategic planning, program design and implementation, and organizational redesign and development. Most recently, he served as The Endowment’s Managing Director of the Northern California regional team and the statewide Inclusive Community Development team, managing nearly $20 million in grantmaking annually.

Prior to joining The Endowment, Ray was one of the founding staff members who helped launch PolicyLink, and prior to that was at The Rockefeller Foundation. He received a bachelor’s degree in Management Science from the University of California, San Diego, and a master’s degree in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. Ray was born in Manila, Philippines, grew up in San Diego, and now lives in Albany with his wife, Fatima Angeles. Their daughter, Isabela, and son, Alessandro, are currently studying at UC Berkeley and San Diego State. When time permits, Ray loves playing golf with his good friends.

Charles Sidney Fields joined the Irvine Foundation’s San Francisco office in late August 2016. He has more than a decade of leadership experience in the nonprofit and philanthropic sector, funding and supporting social change organizations to achieve greater impact.

He previously served as a Senior Program Manager for The California Endowment. There he was responsible for strategy development, grantmaking, and leadership activities in Southern California. He also co-developed and managed Sons & Brothers, the Endowment’s $50 million grantmaking and leadership program focused on improving the health, wellness, and opportunity of boys and young men of color. During his tenure there, he co-developed a $260 million public-private loan fund, the FreshWorks Fund, to increase access to healthy foods and spur economic development in underserved communities in California.

Prior to the Endowment, Charles was a grantmaker at the Marguerite Casey Foundation, managing a $8 million portfolio of grants focused on community economic development, civic engagement, educational equity, violence prevention, and family support.

Charles was also an Initiative Coordinator and Neighborhood and Community Development Fellow at the San Francisco Foundation, where he provided day-to-day management of the West Oakland Initiative. Other positions of note include: Social Action and Policy Coordinator for The National Community Building Network in Oakland; Empowerment Zone Coordinator for the Transportation Resource Information Project in Cincinnati, Ohio; and Organizer and Economic Development Specialist for Welcome House (Northern Kentucky Welfare Reform Task Force) in Covington, Kentucky.

Charles currently serves as the chair of the Edward W. Hazen Foundation and was recently awarded a German Marshall Memorial Fellowship to Europe.

Fields has his master’s in education and bachelor’s in organizational communications from Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Desiree Flores brings 20 years of social justice grant making and program development experience funding social justice movement building at the local, state, and national levels. She was previously the Program Director of U.S. Social Justice at the Arcus Foundation, a global LGBTQ philanthropy, supporting policy and culture change determined by LGBTQ people pushed to the margins. Earlier in her career, she served as Director of Board Affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, and as a longtime program officer at the Ms. Foundation for Women supporting more powerful gender and racial justice movements. Desiree earned a bachelor’s degree from UCLA and a master’s in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

David Greco is a nationally recognized nonprofit leader, speaker, and author on creating a more sustainable and effective social sector. Today David serves as President & CEO of Social Sector Partners helping nonprofits and funders better understand what it really costs for nonprofits to be sustainable and achieve long-term impact.

David began his career working on political campaigns before moving into the nonprofit sector where he has worked to provide access to education for economically disadvantaged youth, built community coalitions around improving the social determinants of health for young people, and supported environmental education and wildlife habitat conservation. In all of his work, he has focused on helping organizations scale programs, expand services and increase impact.

Most recently, David served as Executive Director of All Stars Helping Kids providing early-stage investments in emerging nonprofits working to help break the cycle of poverty for youth in the Bay Area. Prior to leading All Stars, he created and led the Full Cost Project in California to increase the number of grantmakers providing full cost funding, served as Interim President and CEO for Northern California Grantmakers, was the Vice President of the Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) for more than 5 years and Vice President of the Youth Leadership Institute. He regularly speaks at national conferences, has trained thousands of social sector leaders on financial sustainability, and he has partners with the staff, trustees and grantees for dozens of foundations.

David is a professor in the Masters in Nonprofit Administration program at University of San Francisco and is a Certified Board Governance Trainer with BoardSource. He is the author of “Nonprofit Financial Management” featured in “Nonprofit Management 101: A Complete and Practical Guide for Leaders and Professionals” edited by Darian Rodriguez Heyman and Laila Brenner and "Think Money First! Ending the Culture of Scarcity and Achieving Real Impact.” David served for ten years in the Air Force and Air Force Reserves and earned his M.A. in Political Science from Villanova University and B.S. in History & Politics from Drexel University.

Rebecca M. Hamburg is the Chief Network Officer at California Donor Table. She's responsible for strengthening donor networks and foundation alignment. Rebecca also advises the State Leadership Project and previously ran her own consulting firm, helping organizations with grantmaking, advocacy, and legal matters. Before that, she held leadership roles at Alliance for Justice and the National Employment Lawyers Association, and worked as a litigator for civil and human rights cases. Rebecca, a Californian of Mexican and Jewish descent and a mother of two, is also a Governing Board Member for the Wiseburn Unified School District. She holds a J.D. from The George Washington University Law School and a B.A. in political science from the University of California, San Diego.

 Jamillah Finley, the Founder and Executive Director of Breakbox Thought Collective, is originally from the East Coast, but has lived in Fresno for over 30 years. As a graduate of Edison high school and daughter of an esteemed Fresno State arts professor, Jamillah has deep roots in Fresno, California and believes in the power of art, creativity, African culture and storytelling as a catalyst for transformation, information, and unifying all communities across the globe. With more than twenty years of experience as an English teacher, she has received recognition for her innovative approach to education and community service with youth, including:

Fresno Unified School District Teacher of the Year
Artist in Residence for Fresno County Office of Education
African American Heritage Award for Excellence in Education from State of California Assemblyman, Henry T. Perea.

She has compiled her experience as an educator, creative, and missionary to produce an environment centralized around storytelling, community engagement, and outreach and she leads with a heart that believes everyone deserves redemption and liberation. In 2020, her great efforts and innovative approach within BBTC earned the organization a proclamation declaring the thirteenth day of February as “BreakBox Thought Collective Day.”

Jack is the Director for Movement- and Power-Building at Silicon Valley Community Foundation. He joined the foundation in early 2018.

Since joining SVCF, Jack has spearheaded several civic engagement initiatives across the organization. He led SVCF's support to implement the California Voter's Choice Act in Silicon Valley and worked with government partners in the City of San Jose and San Mateo County to establish voter engagement funds. Jack believes it is vital to support BIPOC leaders in order to advance systemic change and build long-term power in communities of color.

Early in his career, Jack worked as an organizer on progressive campaigns across the country and brings lessons from his experience into his work today. More recently, Jack worked in the international development field to promote good governance. He spent over five years at the Open Government Partnership, an international initiative started by the Obama Administration to bring governments and civil society together to build more transparent, accountable, and participatory institutions.

Jack holds a MSc in Public Management and Governance from the London School of Economics and a BS in Religious Studies and Political Science from Santa Clara University.

 In 2014, Jacob founded Digital NEST, a technology workforce development hub that provides youth in rural communities with high-demand technology skills, mentoring, and hands-on experience so they can secure well-paying jobs. Prior, he spent nearly ten years running a successful program funded by the National Science Foundation, encouraging underrepresented youth to study computer science. He is a 2020 recipient of The James Irvine Foundation “Leadership Award” and a 2018 Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation “Entrepreneur Fellow.” Jacob currently sits on the board of Santa Cruz Works, Center for Rural Innovation, serves as an External Advisor to the Chancellor of UC Santa Cruz,  and is on the advisory council for the Aspen Institute Technology Accountability Coalition.

Melissa Nop (she/her/hers) has been working in philanthropy since 2017 and currently serves at NCG’s Manager of Equity and Practice supporting work around culture and community, racial equity, social justice, and public policy – helping to develop networks, training cohorts, and programming.  

Based in the North Bay, she most recently worked at Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees as a Program Associate. As the proud daughter of Khmer refugees, she is passionate about addressing the challenges that immigrants and refugees face. Her interest in healing intergenerational trauma became central after taking a powerful trip home to Cambodia with her mom and brother, which led her to sit on the board of the Center for Empowering Refugees and Immigrants. Melissa is also the Education Chair for the Asian and Pacific Islander Giving Practice which works on empowering API communities to take on challenges locally and beyond. 

Melissa hopes to bring this lens into her work with the NCG community. 

I support and encourage the leadership shifts that are needed to achieve community resilience. I work to create the conditions in which people and organizations can be in effective service of a cause greater than themselves, and where all people can thrive. I strive to create spaces that fuel co-creation, engagement, impact, and liberation. Creating the space that builds trust and honors courage and risk-taking, that supports discomfort, and that allows for creativity to emerge and change to occur. 

My career has spanned the realms of program and workshop design, facilitation, leadership development, and coaching while working in the fields of philanthropy and food systems. I began my career co-founding and co-directing Puente a la Salud Comunitaria in Oaxaca, Mexico, an organization focused on public health, sustainable agriculture, and economic development, all through working with amaranth, a grain native to Mesoamerica and outlawed with the Spanish conquest. I have worked with numerous social justice, leadership development organizations since then. 

As I deepened my experience with leadership development and social change organizations, I realized that what I wanted to more deeply explore was the concept of inner and outer alignment of values and action. I began to study methods that incorporated both of these realms. Through that exploration, I have been deeply engaged with the Art of Hosting, the Center for Courage and Renewal, and the Authentic Leadership Center at Naropa University, calling upon these methods in my work as well as my life. 

My work of the more recent past has been in somatics and anti-racism, having been socialized with an awareness of my white body. This work, for me, is about acknowledging the impact that racism has had not only on bodies of culture but on white bodies, my body, as well, and building new culture to be in discomfort, to address harm, and to be in right relationship with myself and with others.  

Originally from San Francisco, I studied at Middlebury College in Vermont for my BA in Latin American Culture and Politics. I returned in the fall of 2013 to study a Master’s in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability in Sweden. I have lived for five years in different countries Latin America, and I relish travel, farm life, my homeland of California, and good cooking and food. 

Carolyn Wang Kong is the President and Executive Director of the Asian Pacific Fund. In this role, Carolyn works closely with community partners and funders to identify and act on the issues that are most pressing to the bay area’s Asian American and Pacific Islander communities.

Previously, Carolyn worked for 20 years to create health equity for communities across California. She served as the Chief Program Director at Blue Shield of California Foundation, a statewide philanthropy with a dual mission of increasing health equity and ending domestic violence. In this role, provided oversight of the Foundation’s strategy, design, and management of the Foundation’s programs and $40 million grantmaking portfolio. Carolyn has also held operational leadership roles at Kaiser Permanente, where she developed a nationally recognized language access program to meet the needs of 350,000 limited English-speaking members in the Northern California region.

Carolyn holds a master’s in public health and public policy from UC Berkeley and a Bachelor of Science from UCLA. In 2021, Carolyn was awarded the prestigious Terrance Keenan Leadership Award in Health Philanthropy from Grantmakers in Health. She is an alumna of the Coro Fellows program in public affairs. She is originally from East San Jose and spends her weekends driving her sons to basketball games around the greater Bay Area.

Nancy Xiong grew up in Merced, CA as the youngest of ten siblings and is the daughter of Hmong refugee parents from Southeast Asia. These experiences fueled her passion for health and education equity for underserved populations. In her previous capacity, she worked as an AmeriCorps VISTA for a local nonprofit helping to build advocacy and organizational capacity in the Southeast Asian community throughout California. Her background also includes youth development, program management, community engagement and outreach, narrative change, and working closely with first- generation college students and young SEAA professionals.

As a first-generation college student herself, she graduated from UC Berkeley with a Bachelor of Arts in Public Health and a minor in Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies. In her spare time, she enjoys thrift shopping, DIY home projects, and making ice cream.