Make the Most of NCG in 2022

Sarah is passionate about connecting people, exploring new ideas and figuring out how to make things work. She brings these skills, along with a background in program design, network development and learning communities to her work at NCG. As the Manager of Collaborative Philanthropy, Sarah will focus on the work of the Nonprofit Displacement Project and will work with NCG’s collaborative philanthropy groups. Before joining NCG, Sarah provided strategic leadership for an organization that built innovative leadership in the reproductive health, rights and justice sector. Prior to that, Sarah designed and implemented multiple grant programs and learning networks focused on the social determinants of health and safety net healthcare innovation for the Center for Care Innovations.

Sarah received a bachelor’s degree in literary studies with a minor in Latin from the University of Minnesota –Twin Cities. She loves to sew fun clothes and is a bookworm who is very proud to have passed that trait on to her two children.

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.

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.