Board

Kalia Abiade is the Vice President of Programs at Pillars Fund, where she is responsible for sharpening the organization’s strategy and collaborating across the team to execute Pillars’ mission to amplify Muslim leadership toward opportunity and justice for all people. She draws on nearly two decades of experience advocating for equity and racial justice in media, policy, and philanthropy.

Before joining Pillars, Kalia served as an organizer and policy advocate, advancing media accountability, immigrant and refugee rights, religious freedom, voter access, and civic participation. Through the Federal TRIO Programs—Upward Bound and Talent Search—she worked closely with high school students in Southwestern Virginia in their pursuit to become the first members of their families to graduate from college. Kalia began her career as a newspaper journalist and editor, and her analysis has been cited in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, National Public Radio, and the Associated Press, among other outlets.

Kalia currently serves as the co-chair of the board of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, on the board of Inner-city Muslim Action Network (IMAN), and on the policy committee of Independent Sector. She is also a Change Leaders in Philanthropy Fellow with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations./p>

Kalia was raised in California, is a graduate of the University of Florida, and lives with her family in Chicago.

Marco Antonio Quiroga works towards changing systems to ensure those living at the intersections of marginalized identities and pushed to the margins of society are given full access to resources, self-determination, and treated with the dignity & respect they deserve. Marco is driven as a direct result of his own life experience as an undocumented immigrant and queer person of color raised and politicized in Florida.

Marco is the Founder and Executive Director for the Contigo Fund, which launched in response to the horrific massacre that occurred on Latin Night at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida on June 2016 targeting Queer people of color. Contigo made history by becoming the first and only Queer Latinx fund in the United States and largest grantmaking organization in the US South explicitly supporting Queer communities of color. As of 2024, Contigo has already awarded over $4.5 Million to Queer grassroots organizations advancing intersectional racial, gender and economic justice movements across Central Florida. As Contigo's founder, Marco's leadership also made history as the first undocumented executive director of a US-based foundation and he continues serving in that role now eight years since the tragedy.

Most recently, in response to the Florida legislature's far-right attacks on Trans people including their rights to health care via the gender-affirming care ban, Marco organized the launch of the Central Florida Emergency Trans Care Fund and helped support key Trans-led grassroots organizations and leaders fundraise and distribute $100,000 supporting our Trans siblings in Orlando - especially TGNC Black, Latinx, undocumented immigrant, women of color - opening access to HRT and life-saving gender-affirming health care

Nomzana Augustin is the Associate Director for Partnerships and Strategic Initiatives at World Education Services’ Mariam Assefa Fund who are a binational immigrant and refugee funder in the United States and Canada through grants, impact investments, and co-funding partnerships. Nomzana leads the Fund’s external and internal engagements and partnerships, applying a racial equity and justice lens to fund solutions targeting immigrant and refugee students, social entrepreneurs, and proximate leaders. As an African immigrant to the United States, Nomzana brings a profound understanding of the needs and solutions required to integrate and support immigrants and refugees with a particular passion for economic opportunities in the global Black diaspora. Prior to the Mariam Assefa Fund, Nomzana oversaw and supported domestic and international economic development and equity-focused initiatives, grant programs, and partnerships at Save the Children, FHI360, and Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT). Nomzana received her master's degree in public policy from Johns Hopkins University. She currently lives in Washington, D.C.

For more than nine years in philanthropic intermediaries, Sheila Bapat has built grantmaking and capacity building programs to support grassroots leaders. Most recently she served as senior program officer at the RISE Together Fund where she supported grassroots BAMEMSA (Black, African, Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian)-led advocacy and organizing throughout the country. Previously, Sheila served as Program Director at California Bar Foundation, where she launched a statewide Legal Fellowship program which helped to build capacity for legal aid while generating career entry points for law students and attorneys of diverse backgrounds. Sheila received her J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania and her B.A. from the University of Arizona.

Meghna Goswami is the program director of Civic Engagement at Houston Endowment. She leads the grants strategy to strengthen residents’ access to civic and electoral processes. Meghna collaborates with leaders from nonprofits, public entities, and philanthropy to increase immigrant civic integration and voter participation. Bringing the region’s best minds together to solve complex problems is among the most rewarding aspects of Meghna’s work. Collaborating across sectors to tackle tough issues is her lifelong pursuit. She has worked in community development, gender equity, immigrant rights, and affordable housing. Prior to joining Houston Endowment in 2010, Meghna led counseling and client services for Daya, an organization working with South Asian survivors of domestic violence in Houston. Originally from India, Meghna has called Houston her home since 2003. In her spare time, she loves exploring Houston, traveling off the beaten path to non-touristy destinations, and spending time with her husband and two sons. Meghna holds an undergraduate degree in economics from Delhi University, India, and a graduate degree in social work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in India. She is a licensed social worker in the state of Texas.

Angie Junck is the first director of the Human Rights program at the Heising-Simons Foundation and Action Fund, overseeing programmatic strategy and grantmaking to challenge mass criminalization of Black, indigenous, and people of color in the criminal legal and immigration enforcement systems by building their power and advancing reimagined approaches to justice and safety. Previously, Angie was a national movement lawyer and advocate working at the intersection of the criminal legal, youth justice, and immigration systems, serving as the director of Immigrant Defense Programs and Supervising Attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center for over 13 years. In that role, she incubated and led multi-issue collaboratives and campaigns engaging a variety of partners, which resulted in innovative state and local models and policies to address the intersection of criminalization, incarceration, and deportation. Angie currently serves as the chair of the board of Al Otro Lado and on the boards of Women Donors Network Action, Texas Future Project, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, California Coalition for Women Prisoners, and the U.S. program of Human Rights Watch.

Shuya Ohno is the Director for the Just and Inclusive Society Project at Democracy Fund, an independent foundation working to ensure that our political system is able to withstand new challenges and deliver on its promise to the American people. In his role, Shuya helps to lead and strengthen the JIS project’s strategy on building social infrastructure and resilience to division and political violence, with a particular focus on supporting BAMEMSA communities, litigation/legal services/legal education, domestic peacebuilding efforts, and philanthropic partnerships.

Shuya joined Democracy Fund in 2022 after decades of experience as an organizer, communicator, and campaigner in racial, immigrant, and social justice. Prior to joining Democracy Fund, Shuya most recently served as the Managing Director of Strategy at the National Office of Advancement Project where he helped lead strategic campaign and capacity building with grassroots partner organizations across the country. He also helped lead crisis response efforts with impacted communities following major immigration raids in Massachusetts, Iowa, and more recently in Mississippi, and after the police killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Over his career, Shuya has worked in over 30 states to help build up community organizations serving African-American, Native American, Latinx, immigrant, refugee, and formerly-incarcerated communities.

Shuya has served on non-profit 501 (c)(3) and (c)(4) boards and is committed to building power among under-represented and under-served communities of color.
 

Dominique (Domy) Raymond is strategy director for partnerships at Lumina Foundation, an independent, private foundation in Indianapolis that is committed to making opportunities for learning beyond high school available to all. In that role, she is responsible for amplifying Lumina’s thought leadership, developing new relationships and coalitions, and identifying influencers and change agents.

She advises Lumina’s president on thought leadership opportunities and, at his request, directs strategic projects and emerging initiatives for his office.

Raymond has over 20 years of policy experience in higher education, state policy, and workforce development. She previously served as a senior program director of philanthropy at USA Funds (now Strada Education Network); vice president of alliance state relations at Complete College America; special assistant to the secretary of education for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and; higher education policy analyst with the Maryland Higher Education Commission, where she co-chaired the state’s K16 workgroup. Her higher education experience began as an academic advisor at the University of the District of Columbia and the University of Maryland, consecutively.

She serves on the boards of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR) and Inspire Success.

Raymond earned her bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University. In 2013, she was one of ten named to the Chronicle of Higher Education’s The Influence List.

Laura Speer was named the inaugural Director of Strategy at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in February 2019. Prior to this role, she was the associate director for policy reform and advocacy and held primary responsibility for KIDS COUNT, including its annual publications and the KIDS COUNT Data Center. Having spent a number of years doing state- and local-level child advocacy work, Speer was a key liaison and resource person for the KIDS COUNT network of state advocates in the United States, as well as a growing number of child advocates in Latin America interested in data-based advocacy. Laura has a BA in economics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a master's degree in public administration from New York University.

Nahir Torres is deputy director at The Hyams Foundation in Boston, Massachusetts. Her portfolio focuses on education justice, criminal justice reform, youth organizing and immigrant rights, to advance Hyams's overarching goal of dismantling racialized economic disparities in Greater Boston and beyond. She plays an active role in funder organizing to resource movement; spearheading the launch of the Greater Boston Immigrant Defense Fund and advancing movement infrastructure through participatory design processes with movement partners. Nehir joined the Foundation in 2012 with a background in access to educational opportunities for Boston teens and positive youth development. Prior to coming to Hyams, she was a Program Associate, and later, Program Officer for Education at The Boston Foundation (TBF), where she worked on TBF's college completion portfolio including Success Boston and Achieving the Dream. Nahir received her B.A. degree from Wellesley College and a Master of Education from Harvard University. She is an active member of the Social Justice Funders Network, a Massachusetts-based affinity group, and an alum of Justice Funder's Harmony Initiative. In April 2023, Nehir was sworn in as a member of the Governor's Council on Latino Empowerment Council Member of Governor's Council on Latino Empowerment, advising the Governor on strategies to expand economic opportunities for and improve the overall wellbeing of Massachusetts' Latino community.

Vivian Tseng is President and CEO of the Foundation for Child Development, a private foundation dedicated to harnessing the power of research to ensure that all young children benefit from early learning experiences that affirm their individual, family, and community assets, fortify them against harmful consequences arising from poverty, racism, prejudice, and discrimination, and strengthen their developmental potential. 

Prior to FCD, Dr. Tseng served as Senior Vice President, Programs, at the William T. Grant Foundation where she led initiatives to connect research, policy, and practice. She is widely recognized for her leadership role in building an interdisciplinary field of research on research use in policy and practice, expanding research-practice partnerships across the country, and supporting a broader movement to democratize evidence. She regularly speaks to international and domestic audiences on evidence-informed policy and practice. Her research on racial, cultural, and immigration influences on child development have been published in Child Development and her research on promoting social change through research and philanthropy have appeared in the American Journal of Community Psychology, American Psychologist, and Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Dr. Tseng’s career reflects an abiding commitment to racial equity. She has fostered greater equity in grantmaking, developed funding programs to support young researchers of color and nonprofit leaders from racially minoritized and LGBTQ communities, and mentored countless junior colleagues throughout her career. 

Dr. Tseng received her Ph.D. from NYU and her B.A. from UCLA and serves on the Boards of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy (Board chair), Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, and the Federation of Associations in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences (Board Secretary).
 

Carolyn Wang Kong is the president and executive director of the Asian Pacific Fund and is responsible for leading the Fund’s strategy. Carolyn has worked for the past 20 years to create health equity for communities across California. Prior to the Fund, she served as the Chief Program Director at Blue Shield of California Foundation, a statewide philanthropy with a dual mission of increasing health equity and ending domestic violence. She has also held operational leadership roles at Kaiser Permanente, where she developed an award-winning program to meet the needs of 350,000 limited English-speaking members in Northern California. Carolyn holds a master’s in public health and public policy from UC Berkeley and a bachelor of science from UCLA. She is originally from East San Jose and spends her weekends driving her sons to basketball games around the greater Bay Area.