2025 NCG Annual Conference: Becoming Our Vision

Dimple Abichandani is a nationally recognized philanthropic leader, lawyer, and author of A New Era of Philanthropy: Ten Practices to Transform Wealth Into a More Just and Sustainable Future, a book that reimagines how philanthropy can meet this moment.

For two decades, she has worked to reshape philanthropy’s purpose and practice while leading innovative funding institutions. As Executive Director of the General Service Foundation (2015–2022), she aligned the foundation’s grantmaking, investments, and governance with justice values. She was the founding director of the Rise Together Fund, a donor collaborative at the Proteus Fund, and previously led the Center for Social Justice at UC Berkeley School of Law.

A National Center for Family Philanthropy Fellow, Dimple’s leadership has been recognized with a Scrivener Award for Creative Grantmaking. She serves on the Board of Directors of Solidaire Network and has served on the boards/steering committees of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, Northern California Grantmakers, and Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees.Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she advises donors and foundations on transforming wealth into a just and sustainable future.

Angela Glover Blackwell is Founder in Residence at PolicyLink, the organization she started in 1999 to advance racial and economic equity for all. Under Angela’s leadership, PolicyLink gained national prominence in the movement to use public policy to improve access and opportunity for all low-income people and communities of color, particularly in the areas of health, housing, transportation, and infrastructure. Angela is also the host of the Reimagining Democracy for a Good Life podcast and the Radical Imagination podcast and Professor of Practice at the Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley.

Prior to founding PolicyLink, Angela served as Senior Vice President at The Rockefeller Foundation. A lawyer by training, she gained national recognition as founder of the Urban Strategies Council. From 1977 to 1987, Angela was a partner at Public Advocates. Angela is also the co-author of Uncommon Common Ground: Race and America’s Future, and the author of The Curb Cut Effect (2017) and How We Achieve a Multiracial Democracy (2023) published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Vanessa Daniel has worked in social justice movements for 25 years as a labor and community organizer, writer, researcher, and funder. She is the founder of Groundswell Fund (a 501c3), and Groundswell Action Fund (a 501c4), two leading funders of women of color-led organizations in the U.S. Under her leadership, Groundswell moved over $100M to the field, centering intersectional grassroots organizing led by women of color and using a breakthrough philanthropic model that featured supermajorities of women of color movement leaders and former grassroots organizers on its staff and boards of directors. During her tenure, more than 40 foundations and over 2,000 individual donors relied on Groundswell to help them move resources to 200+ organizations at the grassroots.

Groundswell received the National Committee of Responsible Philanthropy’s “Impact Award” for smashing issue silos and Vanessa was featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy as one of 15 “Influencers” who are changing the non-profit world and named by Inside Philanthropy as one of their “Top 100 Most Powerful Players in Philanthropy”. She is the recipient of the 2022 Smith Medal from her alma mater Smith College, the 2017 National Network of Abortion Funds’ Abortion Action Vanguard Award, and the 2012 Gerbode Foundation Fellowship.

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and The San Francisco Bay Guardian, among other publications and her first book, Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Know About How We All Win is being published by Random House in 2025. Prior to founding Groundswell, Vanessa organized homecare workers with SEIU; helped win a landmark living wage law with the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy; and conducted research to support the organizing efforts of welfare mothers with the Applied Research Center (now Race Forward). Currently, through her firm, Vanessa Daniel Consulting, LLC, she offers strategic advising and coaching support to donors, foundations, grassroots organizations and organizational leaders. She serves as board co-chair of the National LGBTQ Task Force, and on the Advisory Board/Brain Trust of the Kataly Foundation’s Environmental Justice Resource Collective, and the Democracy Frontline Fund. She is currently a fellow with the Decolonizing Wealth Project. Vanessa and her co-parent Tricia, are mothers to two daughters, ages six and thirteen.

Prentis Hemphill is a dynamic and influential activist, embodiment teacher, group facilitator, and author who has made significant contributions to various fields, including social justice, community organizing, and mindfulness. They are the Founder and Director of The Embodiment Institute and The Black Embodiment Initiative, and the host of the acclaimed podcast, Finding Our Way. 

For over 10 years, Hemphill has been working with individuals and organizations during their most challenging moments of change. They do this by unearthing the connections between healing, community accountability, and our most inspired visions for social transformation.

Hemphill is an engaging, authentic, and captivating speaker with a natural ability to connect with audiences and create safe spaces for meaningful conversations and dialogue. During their events, they explore the societal tendency to suppress emotions (to the detriment of individual and collective well-being) and examine how existing power structures can hinder the formation of communities while promoting marginalization and exclusion. Their talks are filled with personal anecdotes, humor, and powerful storytelling that leave a lasting impact on listeners and encourage participants to embrace their emotions and build deeper connections.

Before founding The Embodiment Institute, Hemphill was the Healing Justice Director at Black Lives Matter Global Network and a lead somatics teacher with generativesomatics, an organization committed to bringing politicized somatics to movement building, and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), a group dedicated to rebuilding Black movement infrastructure. In 2016, Hemphill was awarded the Buddhist Peace Fellowship Soma Award for community work inspired by Buddhist thought.

Hemphill’s work has been featured in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and Shondaland. Prentis is a contributor to The Politics of Trauma by Staci K. Haines as well as the upcoming You are Your Best Thing edited by Brene Brown and Tarana Burke and Holding Change by adrienne maree brown. Hemphill currently lives on a small farm in Durham, NC with their family.

Arron is NCG’s Director for Member Engagement where he oversees emergent partnerships and key programming to engage NCG’s diverse membership.  Before joining NCG, Arron was a social entrepreneur and strategic advisor who worked with labor, philanthropy, education, and nonprofit leaders to build the capacity of, and sometimes transform, public systems to better serve and support low-income communities.  He previously served as the associate director of education at the now sunset S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, where he worked on policy and system improvement in California public schools, with a focus on STEM education, whole child development strategies, and educator preparation. 

Arron started his career in anti-poverty work with low-income communities in Nebraska before moving to the Bay Area in 2001.  In California, he continued working on family issues including preschool, child care and youth development programs first at a state intermediary and then at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Arron proudly serves as a Trustee of the National Equity Project and as a board member of Oakland-based, Partnership for Children & Youth, and San Francisco-based, Safe & Sound. 

Dwayne S. Marsh assumed the position of President and CEO of Northern California Grantmakers on September 9, 2020. He brings 27 years of experience in the public, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors with a career commitment to advancing racial and economic equity.

Dwayne recently completed a four-year turn as co-Director of the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) and Vice President of Institutional and Sectoral Change at Race Forward Race Forward. During his tenure, the membership network of local, regional, and state entities committed to advancing racial equity through the policies, practices, and public investments grew from just over 20 to nearly 200 participating jurisdictions.

Prior to GARE, Marsh spent six years as a senior advisor in the Office of Economic Resilience (OER) at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. There, he helped advance sustainable planning and development through interagency partnerships, departmental transformation, and funding initiatives managed through OER. He was OER’s principal coordinator for a $250 million grant program and led the development of capacity building resources that reinforced the work of pioneering grantees in 48 states and the District of Columbia. Under his leadership, OER prioritized equity as a foundational principal for its planning and investment initiatives.

Marsh brings to the movement his expertise and considerable experience in coalition building for regional equity and leadership development for policy change. He provides technical assistance and capacity building knowledge to equitable development initiatives that address continuing disparities in affordable housing, transportation investment, and environmental justice. Before HUD, Marsh spent a decade at PolicyLink, the national organization committed to economic and social equity. Before PolicyLink, he directed the FAITHS Initiative for eight years at The San Francisco Foundation, building a nationally renowned community development and capacity building program that continues to this day. His career has been defined by supporting communities traditionally marginalized from full participation in our economy and society to build power and leverage lasting systems transformation.