Vanessa Camarena-Arredondo manages the Cultural Self-Determination portfolio at Tao Rising, a single-family philanthropic office based in San Francisco. Throughout her career in philanthropy, she has sought to bridge meaningful relationships between philanthropic institutions and individuals with transformative community-based work being led by people most proximate to systemic harm. She finds deep value in cultural work and has dedicated her work in philanthropy to uplifting the role cultural practice plays towards creating a more equitable society. Prior to her work with Tao Rising, Vanessa worked at Akonadi Foundation, a vanguard philanthropic institution based in Oakland, California. She was also the Arts & Culture Multicultural Fellow at the San Francisco Foundation. Outside of philanthropy, she ran a cultural institution in Oakland called Studio Grand and, many moons ago, she performed with Las Bomberas de la Bahia, an all-women Bay Area-based ensemble that performed Afro-Puerto Rican Bomba.