Staff
Vanessa Daniel, Executive Director
vdaniel@groundswellfund.org
Vanessa has over 15 years of experience working in social justice movements as a union and community organizer, researcher, freelance journalist, and social justice grantmaker. Prior to leading Groundswell, Vanessa worked for Tides Foundation, where she supported the Colin Higgins Foundation (LGBT youth), the Economic Justice Fund, the Bridging the Economic Divide Initiative, and the Reproductive Justice Initiative. Under her leadership, the Reproductive Justice Initiative increased its grantmaking from $500,000 to $3 million annually and expanded its scope to include technical assistance, evaluation, and funder organizing. Before joining Tides, Vanessa worked in multiple capacities for different sectors of the U.S. social justice movement. As a union organizer with Service Employees International Union Local 715, she built the leadership of homecare and other healthcare workers to successfully fight layoffs, increase wages and improve health benefits and working conditions for homecare workers and other private and public sector healthcare workers. As a community organizer she worked with S.I.R.E.N. (Service, Immigrant Rights, & Education Network) on welfare rights in immigrant communities and with EBASE (East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy), on the campaign that won a landmark living wage law at the Port of Oakland. Her research at the Applied Research Center, a racial justice think tank, supported the grassroots organizing work of welfare mothers involved in GROWL, a national network of community-based welfare rights organizations. Vanessa currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Funders Network on Population, Reproductive Health and Rights, and East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, and on the steering committee for Bay Area Justice Funders Network. Vanessa has a B.A. in American Ethnic Studies from Smith College and is a graduate of the Center for Third World Organizing's Movement Activist Apprenticeship Program.
Alexandra DelValle, Program Officer
adelvalle@groundswellfund.org
Prior to joining the Groundswell Fund team, Alex served as the Program Director at Third Wave Foundation, a national feminist foundation dedicated to supporting youth-led efforts for reproductive and gender justice. Previously, Alex was the Deputy Director of UPROSE, a Brooklyn-based community organization that uses organizing and advocacy to develop intergenerational, indigenous leadership for the environmental justice movement. Alex also served as the Community Mobilization Coordinator at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and as a board member at Choice USA. She holds a BA in Sociology and Women's Studies from Oberlin College, and a MPH in Reproductive, Adolescent and Child Health from Columbia University.
Consultants
Catherine Lerza
Cathy has nearly 40 years' experience as a grantmaker, advocate, trainer, organizer, writer and editor, working with nonprofit organizations and foundations on a range of issues including the environment, economic policy, media and communications, food and agriculture, and women's rights and reproductive health. Most recently, she spent nine years as a senior philanthropic advisor at Tides Foundation, where she advised clients focused on environmental protection and justice, civic engagement and inclusive democracy, and reproductive justice. During her long career, she edited Environmental Action Magazine, co-founded and directed the National Family Farm Coalition, and served as associate director of the Rural Coalition in Washington DC. She was executive director of the San Francisco-based Shalan Foundation for nine years, and served as the interim director of the Beldon Fund. She directed Defining Sustainable Communities, a pioneering effort to build bridges between the environmental, community development and health communities, which culminated in a major national conference in 1994. As a consultant, Cathy has worked with the United Auto Workers, the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, Levi-Strauss Foundation, the Abelard Foundation, the Arca Foundation, the Neighborhood Funders Group, the Council on Foundations, the Women's Economic Agenda Project (CA), the Institute for Conservation Leadership, the Sonoran Institute, , and the Communications Consortium Media Center. She has served on many boards, including Western States Center, Environmental Support Center, National Network of Grantmkers and the Funders Work Group on Sustainable Production and Consumption. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, Foundation News and Commentary and a host of other publications; she is the author or editor of several books, including Food for People, Not for Profit, and dozens of reports. She is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, with a B.S. in Conservation of Natural Resources. Cathy supports Groundswell by providing strategic advising on planning, program design, as well as editing dockets and key communications materials.
Korwin Consulting
Since 1992, Lisa Korwin has worked collaboratively with nonprofit, philanthropic, and governmental organizations including Ms. Foundation and the Women's Foundation of California -strengthening their capacity to meet pressing community needs by conducting evaluations, needs assessments, and other planning efforts. She specializes in working with organizations that are serving and advocating on behalf of traditionally underserved and/or oppressed populations. Lisa has a Master's degree in Public Administration from California State University, East Bay. Lisa is implementing Groundswell's evaluation program.
Elizabeth Seja-Min
As one of the top consultants to the Women's Funding Network since 2002, Elizabeth is at the forefront of developing resources to benefit the over 100 domestic and international foundations and funds that make up the network. She is the lead designer, trainer and coach for the Women of Color International Development Incubator (WOCEDI), a nine-month, intensive fundraising program whose 65 graduates have collectively raised $30 million since 2003. Elizabeth is providing capacity building support to Catalyst grantmaking partners and their Catalyst grantees.
Susan Freundlich
Susan has 25 years of executive leadership and management experience in the philanthropic and non-profit sectors. She has a history of success in creating and sustaining partnerships between foundations, individual donors and non-profit organizations, particularly in the area of women's health and rights. She has raised more than $60 million for progressive non-profit organizations and has served on leadership team during merger of two non-profit public foundations. Susan is assisting with report and proposal development for national foundation partners.