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2024 Fundamentals of Effective Grantmaking
Fred Ali SCG Member
President, Fred Ali Corporation
Pilar Diaz SCG Member
Program Officer, First 5 LA
John E. Kobara
Chief Facilitator, Random Acts of Progress
John is the wildest American dream of his immigrant grandparents who came to this country with nothing. A third-generation Japanese-American. Married over his head to a woman he met on a plane. A proud father of three college graduates with no student debt. A struggling poet. A humbled activist who still is trying to change the world and not grow up.
John’s destiny was forged in the internment camps of 1942, where his grandparents and parents were stripped of all their rights and possessions and incarcerated in the desolate desert of Poston, Arizona for more than 4 years.
His Dad, in his awkward Asian fatherly way, expected John to become a "public person". It took John many years to understand that a "public person" was someone his father wasn't — A person who was social, networked, engaged in the American community, was a good communicator and to have the courage to say what he thought. His mother, a late blooming artist, taught him how to notice the world and to be generous with one’s gifts.
John headed to Los Angeles to attend UCLA which started his 45-year love affair with the imperfect paradise of the City of Angels. His quest to be a public person took him on a career traversing all sectors. His role at the California Community Foundation is his 18th job. He survived three start-ups in three different decades. He worked primarily in the so-called non-profit arena or what he likes to call the “for-purpose” field, interrupted by for-profit and public-sector jobs. He has held big titles and important positions but usually not at the same time. His early work with juvenile felons in maximum security prisons pushed him to become a Big Brother for 10 years and study and eventually teach mentoring all over the world. His work with at-risk youth and recently released felons fulfills him today. His education, both formal and experiential, has empowered his open-mindedness and open-heartedness. He is obsessed with understanding and releasing the unexpressed and untapped human potential in himself and in others. The “public person” journey his father put him on, is infinite. John is grateful for the opportunities to sustain the dream of his grandparents by dedicating his life to helping others build a more joyful, equitable, just, and compassionate world.
Cynthia Freeman SCG Member
Senior Program Direvtor, Community Partners
Freeman has served on the steering committees of Interfaith Funders and Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy NY and is prior board chair of Jumpstart and co-founder of the Southern California Fiscal Sponsors Network. Trained as a Heart to Heart racial justice dialogue facilitator for LA’s Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation initiative, Freeman has served on the Saturday Dialogues facilitation team for the Alliance of White Anti-Racists Everywhere – Los Angeles (AWARE-LA). She is a graduate of Brown University, to which she received unearned admissions preference as a legacy and full-pay applicant, and has an MPA in nonprofit management from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service.
Kameron Green
Vice President, Professional Learning & Family Philanthropy, SCG
Kameron is a member of The Prytanean Women's Honor Society, the Alliance for Women in Media, and is a member of the Board of Directors for Central City Neighborhood Partners (CCNP), a leading non-profit organization committed to advancing systemic change to benefit low-income communities through collaborations. Kameron graduated from The University of California, Berkeley with a Bachelor's Degree in Mass Media Communications.
Joanna Jackson SCG Member
President and CEO, Weingart Foundation
Driven by her commitment to racial and social justice, Joanna has over 25 years of experience in the social sector at a range of institutions. Currently serving as Vice President of Programs at Weingart Foundation, Joanna is a member of the Leadership Team responsible for the management of the Foundation’s primary grantmaking program, as well as oversight of the Foundation’s learning and planning. Joanna joined the Foundation in 2008 as a program associate, and most recently held the position of Director, Grant Operations.
Prior to joining Weingart Foundation, Joanna spent over a decade in the nonprofit, philanthropic and public sectors. Joanna serves on the Board of Southern California Grantmakers and Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. Joanna earned a master’s degree in public administration from Baruch College, The City University of New York, where she was a National Urban Fellow. She is also a proud HBCU graduate having received her bachelor’s degree from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia.
Originally from New York, Joanna lives in Mid City Los Angeles with her husband and two children, who are the joy of her life.
Felicia Jones
Managing Director, Programs & Operations, Social Good Solutions
for leading program strategy, development, and implementation across the firm’s portfolio of services; and
ensuring operational effectiveness in the firm’s business practices.
She has extensive experience as a non-profit leader, she has spearheaded and facilitated multiple collective impact efforts bringing communities and institutions together to advance racial equity through creation of new institutional policies, practices, and investments in racial equity. In her former role as Deputy Director with Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement (COPE), she co-lead a community effort leading the county of San Bernardino to declare racism a public health crisis and to initiate a series of internal reforms to address racial equity.
While serving as a co-chair, she helped to establish the Black Equity Fund, a pooled fund effort and partnership between the Inland Empire Community Foundation and the Inland Empire Black Equity Initiative to strengthen and scale Black-led and empowering organizations’ sustainability and capacity to lead regional systems change work. She also served on the design and implementation committees and now the interim governance board of a new entity, the Innovation-Center (i-Center). The i-Center is a effort to build infrastructure through a network of Centers to deepen the capacity, impact, and sustainability of California’s grassroots movements for racial and social transformation
She was born and raised in South Los Angeles and is a graduate of Mount St. Mary’s University in Los Angeles, California. She resides in San Bernardino county.
Rhiannon McAfee
Policy & Advocacy Strategist, Consultant
Emily Michels
Manager, Public Policy & Government Relations, SoCal Grantmakers
Prior to joining SCG in 2021, Emily worked as the Ethics and Communications Officer for a small technology company, developing internal policies for safe work practices and standards philosophies for efficient workflow. Previously, she worked as a health policy analyst in Denver, CO, conducting legislative research, drafting, lobbying, and analysis with a focus on consumer rights, access to health care, and social determinants of health. She has published research on policy solutions for ethical community-driven public health interventions, fair research practices, narrative ethics, and equitable resource distribution. Emily graduated from Emory University with an M.A. in Bioethics and Colorado College with a B.A. in Bioethics & Public Policy.
Paul Moore SCG Member
Executive Director, David Bohnett Foundation
A native of Orange County, California, Paul Moore holds a B.S. in Finance, cum laude, from California State University, Northridge, earned an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business, where he was a Society and Business Fellow, and an alumn of the LGBTQ Executive Leadership Program at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He resides in Los Angeles and is married to Brett Simon. Paul serves on the Board of Directors of CenterLink, the national association of LGBTQ Community Centers, a Board Member of the Friends of Runyon Canyon, and an Advisory Board Member of the USC Marshall School of Business Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab.
Janae Oliver SCG Member
Community Health Consultant, Kaiser Permanente
Kaci Patterson SCG Member
Founder & Chief Architect, Social Good Solutions / Black Equity Collective
Jennifer Price-Letscher SCG Member
President & CEO, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation
Originally from the Pacific Northwest, Jennifer began a career in the social impact sector following a visit to her sister’s home in Los Angeles in the early ‘90s. Her trip coincided with the city’s civil unrest, as countless Angelenos organized to demand racial justice. Seeing Los Angeles and its potential to be a place for all things possible, challenging, and just, Jennifer decided to stay. Soon after, Jennifer started working in the arts and became involved with prominent artists and art organizations, including 18th Street Arts Center and Highways Performance Space. Jennifer found herself immersed in a community of people exploring their identities and artistic voices at the height of the culture wars of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Jennifer advocated alongside these artists who demanded that marginalized voices in mainstream theater have equitable access and a seat at the table. “One of art’s greatest qualities lies in its capacity to elicit greater understanding and empathy, why wouldn’t we want to hear more voices?” Jennifer reflected. This experience building empathy and power shoulder-to-shoulder with underrepresented artists would later guide her work in the nonprofit sector.
Jennifer started her philanthropic career at the Whitecap Foundation, where she led capacity building programs before joining the Sterling-Dorman Foundation and spending a decade focused on college access and success. “Education can be a profound lever for transforming lives and lifting people out of poverty,” she noted. Today, Jennifer is Vice President for Grantmaking and Initiatives at The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, where she manages its responsive grantmaking and efforts focused on collaboration, organizational effectiveness, and systems change. Her grantmaking philosophy aspires to weave together all the strands necessary to create a strong community fabric. To realize her vision, Jennifer taps into a long-standing “spirit of inquiry” that allows her to listen to her nonprofit partners deeply and with humility and curiosity. She credits SCG and early philanthropic mentors with helping her see the importance of building strong relationships founded on trust. “Our nonprofit partners and their constituents know what's best for their communities and what’s needed to accomplish transformational change.” While she recognizes that not all foundations can immediately enact a comprehensive trust-based strategy, she is hopeful that the sector will gradually embrace more of its principles. “I hope some of our funder colleagues will let go of the ‘power over’ framework reliant on directives and bureaucracy and shift toward a ‘power with’ model founded on a collaborative spirit and willingness to make change together. Community transformation requires all hands on deck.”
Given the devastation wrought by the crises of this year, Jennifer is proud of the bold actions The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation has taken to support their nonprofit partners. At the beginning of the pandemic, they signed onto the Council of Foundation’s pledge advocating for more flexible and equitable grantmaking, canceled all their grant reporting, and distributed ne
Sequoia Thompson
Coordinator, Equity, Organizational Culture, & Dialogue, SoCal Grantmakers
Sequoia is a Senior Trainer for the Los Angeles County Lesbian Bisexual and Queer Women’s Health Collaborative. She has experience facilitating interactive dialogue about intersectionality, racial healing, gender identity, and has spoken on international panels including the 2017 Opportunities for a more Inclusive Higher Education with the former Dutch Minister of Education, Jet Bussemaker at Universiteit Van Amsterdam. Sequoia incorporates storytelling to humanize the difficult discussions that individuals and society at large are not having. This pairing of storytelling and administrative decolonizing creates a powerfully impactful ambiance for transformational and sustainable change.
Sequoia is passionate about dedicating to being a part of healing the hearts of those affected by systemic anti-Black racism, challenge the institutions who overtly and/or covertly perpetuate it, and continue to challenge ourselves so we don’t perpetuate this systemic plague that separates us.
Jennifer Vanore, Ph.D. SCG Member
President & COO, UniHealth Foundation
Rosemary Veniegas SCG Member
Director of Health Programs, California Community Foundation
Adrienne Wittenberg SCG Member
Executive Director, S. Mark Taper Foundation