Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees - GCIR

José González, Co-Chair
Program Officer
Bush Foundation
St. Paul, MN

José González, co-chair and member of the executive committee, has been a program officer for The Bush Foundation since December 2000. Previous to joining the Bush Foundation, José worked as a programs analyst for the Minneapolis Department of Health and Family Support coordinating the Department's Youth Violence Prevention Project and focusing on access issues for limited English-speaking populations in Minneapolis. Other employment experience includes working with migrant farm workers; in summer youth employment programs; in county economic assistance and child protection programs; in child/adolescent psychiatric units; in pediatric, family planning, maternity, and school-based clinics; in an STD/HIV/pregnancy prevention peer education program; and managing an interpreter program and supervising health clinic social workers. José holds an MSW and a BA in Psychology from the University of Minnesota.
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Laura Hogan, Co-Chair
Vice President of Programs
The California Endowment
Sacramento, CA

Laura Hogan, co-chair and member of the executive committee, is vice president of Programs for The California Endowment. She oversees all activities of The Endowment's grantmaking programs and initiatives, which total approximately $160 million per year in funding to organizations and public institutions working to improve access to affordable, quality health care; increase the cultural competence of California's health system; and improve community health for California's underserved communities. Prior to her promotion, Laura was program director overseeing all grantmaking under The Endowment's Access program. Under her leadership the program launched several initiatives to expand access to health care and coverage to the state's underserved communities. Prior to joining The Endowment in 1999 as a program officer, Laura served as executive director at CommuniCare Health Centers in Davis, California, where she worked since 1980. As executive director, Laura oversaw a staff of 140 and a $5 million annual budget. Laura holds a master's degree in Public Administration with a Health Services emphasis from the University of San Francisco and a bachelor's degree from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Sandra Smith, Secretary
Senior Community Research and Grants Management Officer
The Columbus Foundation
Columbus, OH

Sandra Smith, serves as a senior community research and grants management officer at The Columbus Foundation with leadership in the areas of arts and humanities, capacity building and leadership development, and immigrant and refugee issues. She is also the senior community research and grants management officer for the Ingram-White Castle Foundation and the Columbus Youth Foundation. Prior to joining The Columbus Foundation, Ms. Smith was the president and CEO of the Madame Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis. She is a member of the boards of the Fund for Folk Culture, Leveraging Investments in Creativity, and Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees. Ms. Smith is a graduate cum laude of Capitol University in Columbus Ohio and pursued post-graduate studies at the Ohio State University as an academic fellow in arts and public policy.
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Henry Allen, Treasurer
Executive Director
Discount Foundation
Boston, MA

Henry Allen, treasurer and member of the membership committee, is the executive director of the Discount Foundation. The foundation focuses on alleviating poverty by supporting community organizing as well as community and union partnerships that promote jobs and living wages for the poor. Previously, Henry was the senior program officer at the Hyams Foundation in Boston for 16 years. In that capacity, he provided leadership in the area of civic participation, which included community organizing, leadership development, and public policy advocacy in the areas of affordable housing, workforce development, public education reform, community safety and neighborhood revitalization. Active in national philanthropic organizations, Henry served for two years as the co-chair of the Neighborhood Funders Group, chaired its program and annual conference committees, and co-founded its Working Group on Labor and Community Partnerships. Henry also has an extensive background in education. He taught at the high school and college levels, served as a dean at a community college, and directed a popular education school for people involved in workplace and community organizing in Boston.
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Lina Avidan, Membership Committee Chair
Program Executive
Zellerbach Family Foundation
San Francisco, CA

Lina Avidan, board member at large and chair of the membership committee, is program executive at the Zellerbach Family Foundation, where she manages all aspects of grantmaking for the Immigrants & Refugees and Strengthening Communities grantmaking programs for the past five years. She has 24 years of experience advocating on behalf of underserved communities in the areas of immigration policy, income rights, and civil rights. She worked for eight years as the director of public policy at the Northern California Coalition for Immigrant Rights, and later served as the founding director of the Northern California Citizenship Project, a regional multi-agency consortium dedicated to expanding civic and political participation among newly naturalized citizens and immigrants in Northern California. Lina has an MPA and a BA in international relations from San Francisco State University.
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Sue Lin Chong, Member
Public Affairs Manager
Annie E. Casey Foundation
Baltimore, MD

Sue Lin Chong, board member at large and member of the communications and membership committees, is the public affairs manager at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Prior to joining the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Sue Lin supervised the health care and broadcast groups at Devillier Communications, a Washington, D.C.-based public relations and marketing firm, where she managed the public relations campaigns of several clients, including the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Her prior experience also includes serving as the director of public relations at the Lombardi Cancer Center at Georgetown University Medical Center; senior manager of program information for PBS; and communications manager for MDLinx, Inc., an Internet-based knowledge service for health care professionals. Sue Lin was also an associate at the law firm Carlsmith Ball in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she practiced commercial litigation. She has a BA in art history from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from the William S. Richardson School of Hawaii at the University of Hawaii.
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Bob Glaves, Member
Executive Director
The Chicago Bar Foundation
Chicago, IL

Bob Glaves, board member at large and member of the communications committee, has served as executive director of The Chicago Bar Foundation since 1999, after a successful nine-year career as a civil litigator at the Chicago law firm then known as Menges, Mikus & Molzahn. He has received a number of commendations over the course of his career, highlighted by the Maurice Weigle Outstanding Young Lawyer Award in 1998, the Chicago Legal Clinic's Cardinal Bernadin Award for action on behalf of social justice in 2000, the Atticus Finch Award from Chicago Volunteer Legal Services in 2002, the Human Rights Practitioner of the Year Award at the Midwest Light of Human Rights Awards Luncheon in 2003, and a Distinguished Service Award from the John Marshall Law School Alumni Association in 2004. Bob also was selected in 2002 as one of the "40 Illinois Attorneys Under 40 to Watch" by Law Bulletin Publishing Company. He is a 1991 magna cum laude graduate of The John Marshall Law School and received a BA in Political Science and Journalism from the University of Wisconsin in 1987.
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Sandra J. Martínez, Member
Program Director
The California Wellness Foundation
Woodland Hills, CA

Sandra J. Martínez, board member at large, is program director overseeing grantmaking in special projects at The California Wellness Foundation (TCWF). Before her work with special projects, Sandra was a program director for violence prevention at TCWF and directed the Progressive Los Angeles Network and other community organizing efforts at the Community Coalition. She has also conducted extensive research on health-related issues, including co-authoring "The Los Angeles County Adolescent HIV Strategic Plan." Sandra is a commissioner for the City of Los Angeles Commission for Children Youth and Their Families and serves on the board of the Echo Park Film Center. She previously served as a community funding board member for the Liberty Hill Seed Fund, a board member for Woman and Youth Supporting Each Other (WYSE) and the California Child, Youth and Family Coalition. Sandra received her M.P.H. from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.A. from the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Victor Quintana, Communications Committee Chair
Senior Program Officer
Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock
Manhasset, NY

Victor Quintana, member at large and chair of the communications committee, is senior program officer at the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program, where he has worked for nine years. He is a member of the board of the Neighborhood Funding Group. Prior to joining the Veatch Program, Victor was the director of Community Collaboration, an economic development and entrepreneurship training program at the Graduate School of Business of Columbia University. He also served as the first director of a startup health project to provide a continuum of social and health services to persons who have AIDS or are HIV-positive and travel between New York City and Puerto Rico. He also served in New York City government for eight years in a number of senior positions, including three years as the chief of staff for the commissioner of New York City's Department of Environmental Protection. From 1984-85, Victor studied at Columbia University as a Revson Program fellow. Victor holds a BA from Herbert H. Lehman College.
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Bill Rahn, Member
Senior Program Manager
Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation
Little Rock, AR

Bill Rahn, board member at large and a membership committee member, is senior program manager at the Winthrop Rockefeller Foundation (WRF), where he works on economic development, education, and social and racial justice issues. Bill has helped to shape and manage numerous grants related to immigrants and refugees. He recently provided guidance on a WRF study, "A Profile of Immigrants in Arkansas" (2007), distributed widely across the state of Arkansas. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2000, Bill was a program officer at the Foundation of the Mid-South for three years, and served as director of the Arkansas Legal Services Support Center from 1987-1997. He also was staff attorney at Central Arkansas Legal Services from 1977-1986. Bill has served as vice chair of the City of Little Rock Parks & Recreation Commission since 2003. Bill holds a B.A. from College of Wooster and a J.D. from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
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Adriana Rocha, Member
Program Officer
New York Foundation
New York, NY

Adriana Rocha, board member at large and a member of the program committee, is a program officer at the New York Foundation (NYF), where she manages a portfolio of 40 active grants for start-up organizations that focus on community organizing and advocacy as well as the Foundation's Summer Internship in Community Organizing program. Adriana began her career as a community health outreach worker and worked in the HIV/AIDS field as an outreach worker, case manager and trainer. Prior to coming to NYF, she worked with YouthBuild USA and on youth leadership development initiatives. While she was with Community Resource Exchange she provided planning, fundraising and board development consulting to more than 80 organizing, immigrant, youth and HIV/AIDS organizations. Adriana received a B.A. in Politics from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and earned her M.A. from Columbia University Teachers College's Social Organizational Psychology Program. She is a board member at two community-based organizations and is a native of Toluca, Mexico.
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Maria Teresa Rojas, Member
Deputy Director of the U.S. Justice Fund
Open Society Institute - U.S. Justice Fund
New York, NY

Maria Teresa Rojas, member at large and member of the communications committee, is the deputy director of the U.S. Justice Fund at the Open Society Institute - U.S. Justice Fund, which she joined in 2000 initially as associate director in the communications department and then in the grantmaking and program development department. Maria Teresa brings more than 25 years of combined management and communications experience in the public, nonprofit, and philanthropic sectors, as well as expertise in strategic communications, project management, and television production. Prior to joining OSI, Maria Teresa served as director of communications & external relations at the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers from 1997 to 2000. Her other work experience includes program manager at Bellevue Hospital; general manager at Crosswalks Television Network, City of New York; executive director of the NYC Commission on Public Information and Communications; special assistant to the president at Community Service Society of New York; and regional director of the Caribbean Development Program, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Maria Teresa holds an MPA from Bernard M. Baruch College of The City University of New York and a BA in communications from Rutgers University.
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Tony Tapia, Member
Senior Program Director
Western Union Foundation
Englewood, CO

Tony Tapia, board member at large and a member of the membership committee, is the senior program director for the Western Union Foundation, the charitable arm of the Western Union Company, where he oversees the foundation's strategic global-giving programs and non-governmental organization (NGO) partnerships. Tony works with Western Union Agents worldwide to promote charitable giving. Previously, Tony was the director of grantmaking for the Denver-based Gill Foundation, where he oversaw funding to social justice and human service nonprofit organizations in the United States. Prior to his work at the Gill Foundation, Tony was the senior director of Cultural Participation Programs at the Association of Performing Arts Presenters in Washington, D.C. In that capacity, he directed a grantmaking program that supported artists' residencies, and engaged communities in the performing arts in the United States. Tony currently serves as a trustee of the Bright Mountain Foundation and is on the board of Metro Volunteers. He has served on numerous boards including Hispanics in Philanthropy, Latin American Research and Services Agency, and Funders for Lesbian and Gay Issues.
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Ralph Taylor, Program Committee Chair
Program Officer
Central Indiana Community Foundation
Indianapolis, IN

Ralph Taylor, chair of the GCIR program committee, is a Grants Officer for the Central Indiana Community Foundation, where he works in the areas of Youth Development, Education, Environment, Civic, and Inclusiveness. He is the lead staff person for CICF's Sam H. Jones Creating Greater Awareness Forum Series and the Uncommon Common Ground Series that spotlights the invisible newcomer communities of the Greater Indianapolis Area. Ralph currently serves as president of the Rotary Club of Indianapolis which is one of the ten largest Rotary clubs in the world. Prior to joining CICF, Ralph was director of Community Service for the Indiana Youth Institute (IYI) and recreation administrator for Indy Parks, an extension educator with the Purdue University Cooperative Extension Service, and a teacher with Indianapolis Public Schools. Current community and civic activities include work with the Asian American Alliance, Inc. Immigrant Welcome Center, Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame Board Member, and Pacers Foundation Grant Review Committee. Ralph is also a radio/color analyst for Purdue Men's Basketball.
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Ellen Widess, Member
Senior Program Officer
Rosenberg Foundation
San Francisco, CA

Ellen Widess, member at large and member of the program committee, is senior program officer at the Rosenberg Foundation. In addition to serving on the GCIR board, Ellen is on the steering committee of the Neighborhood Funders' Working Group on Labor and Communities. Prior to joining the Rosenberg Foundation in 1999, Ellen worked on public policy issues as an academic at University of California at Berkeley and the University of Texas Law School. She has served as a government regulator for Cal/OSHA and the Texas Department of Agriculture, directing programs in pesticides and farm-worker health and safety. She was chief counsel for the Texas Federation of Labor. As director of health policy for Children's Advocacy Institute, she worked on immigration and welfare reform and access to health care issues for low income and immigrant children and families. She also founded and directed a nonprofit organization, Lead Safe California, dedicated to forging consensus and sound public policy in California to prevent childhood lead poisoning and preserve affordable housing. Ellen has a JD from Boalt School of Law, University of California, Berkeley and a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.
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