About Me

I have over ten years of grantmaking experience with private operating and family foundations. As program officer at the Getty Foundation, I directed its internship program for multicultural undergraduates to gain professional experience in the arts and managed an international fellowship for curators. In addition, I was part of the senior leadership team that transitioned the Foundation from traditional, responsive grantmaking to strategic philanthropy and designed its theory of change, established evaluation measures, and set communications goals. My work resulted in a new position responsible for evaluation and communications efforts that would ensure that grant initiatives achieved maximum impact. Prior to working at the Getty Foundation, I was the director of programs at the Flintridge Foundation that supported environmental conservation, ensemble theaters, and individual visual artists. I helped introduce grantmaking strategies that focused less on specific projects and more on building nonprofits’ financial and artistic capacities.

Most recently, I was director of programs at Southern California Grantmakers where I provided programming on philanthropic issues to independent, family, community, corporate, and operating foundations, as well as individual donors. In addition, I developed its public policy work, influencing legislation to simplify private foundations’ excise tax; introduced social impact bonds/pay for success to political leaders in Los Angeles; and established new public-private relations that resulted in spearheading the region’s first Mayoral Candidate Forum dedicated to nonprofits’ interests.

I have been active in Los Angeles Arts Funders, the Los Angeles Arts Loan Fund, and was a working group member that brought the Pew Cultural Data Project to California. Currently I serve on the board of the California-based Center for Cultural Innovation. I am also a Council Member of American Alliance of Museum’s Center for the Future of Museums with whom I am excited to be beta-testing their first MOOC courses on futurist practices. Previously I served as vice-president of Grantmakers in the Arts and was board member for national organizations Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) and Network of Ensemble Theaters (NET).

With local and national expertise on private foundation grantmaking and arts and culture philanthropy, I have been a guest instructor at University of Southern California and Claremont Graduate University as well as a presenter at convenings of nonprofit executives. I am pursuing a doctorate in public policy and administration at Walden University with a focus on the financial relationship between private foundation funding and nonprofits’ financial health. During this time, I have consulted on a number of projects for private and public grantmakers, including developing a teaching curriculum for teenage Jewish philanthropists; providing program officer support to a national arts foundation; stewarding a strategic planning process; designing and launching a civic leadership awards program; and evaluating an international initiative for social entrepreneurs.