BLACK FOX FELLOWS
Conceived in 2018 and launched in 2019, Black Fox Philanthropy funds Black Fox Fellows to help accelerate the pace in which institutional racism and gender inequality is dismantled by supporting women of color in philanthropy in achieving ever-higher levels of power and influence. We underwrite all registration costs for Fellows to attend the Opportunity Collaboration (OC) annual convening, and provide ongoing connectivity and support as desired.
What do Black Fox Fellows have in common? They are strong, visionary and brilliant women of color who are changing the face of philanthropy. Each Fellow holds open office hours for OC delegates to answer questions, provide insights, and be a resource for NGOs seeking guidance to do with the funding landscape in the sector and within their respective foundations.
All are eager OC delegates keen to serve and learn from global leaders who are bringing about deep and lasting change.
2023 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Isa Ellis is a Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation focused on expanding access to equitable education and employment pathways that lead to upward mobility for learners who have been historically and systemically marginalized.
Isa’s more than 15 years in education includes brokering partnerships between the education, corporate, governmental, NGO & philanthropic sectors to increase access & funding for underserved youth. Isa holds a master’s degree in business administration & public administration from the University of Notre Dame and Baruch College.
Prior to joining the Gates Foundation, Isa was national vice president at the Boys & Girls Club of America (BGCA), launching the organization’s first national postsecondary and workforce development strategy. Isa’s background includes leading performance management and school turnaround at Chicago Public Schools, directing organizational growth at the Achievement Network, and brokering cross-sector partnerships as head of global education and workforce at the Clinton Global Initiative; where she facilitated the organization’s largest education commitment of more than $600M in investments to increase equity in girls’ education, globally.
Isa serves on the boards of Digital Promise, Workforce Matters, UNCF Pacific Northwest, and Seattle Central College.
2023 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Bernadette Moffat is Executive Director of the ELMA Philanthropies Services (Africa)(Pty) Ltd, based in Cape Town, South Africa. In this role, Bernadette oversees the philanthropic work of the ELMA Group of Foundations in 10 countries in Southern Africa. She also serves on the Boards of the ELMA Philanthropies Services (US) Inc, and the ELMA South Africa Foundation.
Prior to joining ELMA in 2006, Bernadette was chief executive officer of the Women’s Development Bank Trust, an organization that promotes the participation of women at all levels of the economy through investing in leading South African companies, providing microcredit to poor rural women, supporting the growth of small and medium women-owned businesses and supporting the appointment of women to executive and board roles in major South African companies. She has served as non-executive director of the Bidvest Group Limited and Advantage Asset Managers (Pty) Ltd.
Bernadette has international experience as an entrepreneur and corporate lawyer. Previously she served as a consultant to the Commission on Gender Equality advising them on issues of women’s economic empowerment. The Commission published her work The Working Woman’s Manual, a volume on women and labor law in South Africa (1996). Honored by France with the Ordre du Mérite in 2007, she holds a magna cum laude BA degree from Wellesley College in the United States and a Juris Doctor from Columbia University, also in the United States.
2023 Black Fox Fellow
2022 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Dr. Kimberly Osagie leads the strategy and design of Echoing Green’s programs to select and support social innovators, managing the team disbursing capital, building community, and growing capacity in hundreds of leaders worldwide.
Dr. Kimberly E. Osagie – a Nigerian woman with Louisiana warmth and a New York edge – brings more than 15 years of senior leadership experience in education, nonprofits, and philanthropy to her role as Vice President of Programs at Echoing Green. A teacher at heart and a system builder by preference, Kimberly leads the Investments and Portfolio teams to develop strategic and holistic support for hundreds of breakthrough social innovators around the world.
Throughout her career, Kimberly has supported school systems, nonprofits, and social entrepreneurs to design and scale culturally relevant, inclusive, and equitable programs. She most recently served as founding Partner for Diverse, Inclusive, and Equitable Talent Strategy at Promise54, a national talent consulting firm for mission-driven organizations. In that role, she supported a $1M portfolio of client organizations, coached over 100 senior executives, and co-authored the three-part interactive series DEI in Action: A Radically Human Approach to Case Studies.
Kimberly started her career in Harlem, New York as a middle school English teacher. She quickly became a mentor for novice teachers at City College and later joined the founding high school team at Democracy Prep Charter School. After five years working with students and families directly, Kimberly turned her focus to adult learning, hybrid in-person and online instruction, and coaching for equity as founding Associate Dean and Assistant Professor of Practice at Relay Graduate School of Education. There, she established and tripled the organization’s partnership with the New York City Teaching Fellows and trained and evaluated educators as far afield as South Africa. Kimberly left Relay to pursue doctoral study, spending time in Lebanon exploring the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the country’s school system. The visit sparked her interest in equitable resource allocation, so Kimberly joined the Walton Family Foundation’s K-12 Education team to design more inclusive internal talent systems and more equitable giving practices to benefit Black and Brown leaders. She took her learnings from this role into her work as Vice President for Educator Success at Curriculum Associates, designing the organization’s first-ever inclusion strategy and managing online and in-person curriculum design to support leaders in more than 11,000 U.S. school systems.
Kimberly holds a Doctorate in Education Leadership from Harvard University, a Master of Science in Teaching from Pace University, and undergraduate degrees in English and Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia. She was selected as a Pahara Fellow for education leadership in 2014, earned a Derek Bok Center for Teaching Excellence Award at Harvard in 2017, and was granted an Equity Lab Seeding Disruption fellowship for her interest in place-based approaches to disrupting inequity in 2020. After a decade in Harlem, Kimberly now lives in Washington, D.C., with a pandemic-inspired, ever-growing collection of houseplants.
2022 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Dr. Wanjiru Kamau-Rutenberg is an Executive-In-Residence currently designing and building a global initiative focused on Black women senior leaders. She also serves as an advisor and ambassador to the Rise program and supports the Talent Engine programs at Schmidt Futures integrate global perspectives and a social inclusion lens into their work. She previously served as the inaugural Executive Director of the Rise program, a joint initiative of Schmidt Futures and the Rhodes Trust.
Dr. Kamau-Rutenberg has in the past served as Director of African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) which works towards inclusive, agriculture-driven prosperity for the African continent by strengthening the production and dissemination of more gender-responsive agricultural research and innovation. Dr. Kamau-Rutenberg also founded and served as Executive Director of Akili Dada, an award-winning leadership incubator that invests in high-achieving young women from under-resourced families, who are passionate about driving change in their communities. She was also an assistant professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco where her academic research and teaching interests centered on African politics, gender, international relations, ethnicity, and democratization, and the role of technology in social activism.
She has received recognition for her work, including being honored as a White House Champion of Change by the Obama Administration, named one of the 100 Most Influential Africans by New African magazine, recognized as a Ford Foundation Champion of Democracy, awarded the United Nations Intercultural Innovation Award, named one of Kenya’s Top 40 Women Under Age 40 and a 2018 Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellow.
2022 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Teresa C. Younger is an activist, advocate, renowned public-speaker, organizational strategist, and a proven leader in the philanthropic and policy sectors. Having spent over 20 years on the frontlines of some of the most critical battles for comprehensive equity and the elimination of institutionalized oppression, she now serves as the President and CEO of the Ms. Foundation for Women.
Prior to joining the Ms. Foundation for Women, Younger served as the executive director of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Permanent Commission on the Status of Women and as executive director of the ACLU of Connecticut — the first African American and the first woman to hold that position.
Younger is a thought leader at the critical intersections of gender and race. Within the philanthropic sector she serves on initiatives to shape and change the narrative of women and girls, including Grantmakers for Girls of Color, Funders for Reproductive Equity, Philanthropy New York and Black Funders for Social Justice.
Additionally, Younger serves on a number of boards including the Ethel Walker School and Essie Justice Group.
She has appeared on MSNBC’s UP with David Gura, NBC News, NPR Radio, Elle Magazine, Cosmopolitan, SiriusXM, and in USA Today, AP, Rewire, BadassWomenLeaders.com podcast and the New York Times.
Younger is a graduate of the University of North Dakota and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters in Humanities from the University of New Haven in 2018. She is also a proud lifetime Girl Scout and Gold Award recipient.
2022 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Latanya Mapp Frett [she/her/hers] is President and CEO of Global Fund for Women and serves on the Board of Directors for Global Fund for Women and Global Fund for Women UK. As a feminist fund, Global Fund for Women offers flexible support to a diverse group of partners – more than 5,000 groups across 175 countries so far – to create meaningful change that will last beyond our lifetimes.
Previously, she was the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Global, the international arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, with regional and country offices in Africa and Latin America. She quadrupled the size of the program in four years to become one of the most innovative and sustainable global health organizations in the field.
Ms. Frett worked for eight years as a human rights officer for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and for 10 years with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Ms. Frett served as a delegate to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 and continues to fight for the human rights of women.
An attorney by training, she began her career at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund in Washington, DC. She has received many honors and awards, including two Esteemed Meritorious Honor Awards from the U.S. government and the highest honor in civil service, the Superior Honor Award, from the U.S. State Department. Ms. Frett was one of 30 Foreign Service Officers honored with the Colin Powell Fellowship by then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Ms. Frett currently serves on the Board of Directors at Oxfam America and Management Sciences for Health and is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Ms. Frett is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow and author of four U.N. human rights reports and manuals. She is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and Alum of ICAP. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in government and politics, a master’s in public policy, and a JD from the University of Maryland.
Ms. Frett currently resides in San Francisco with her family.
2021 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Emily Caccam serves as Program Officer to the Schooner Foundation, a Boston-based private foundation taking an intersectional approach to advancing human rights initiatives. In her role, Emily contributes to the full spectrum of the Foundation’s grantmaking and operations, including due diligence, proposal development, systems building, strategic partnerships, and stakeholder relationship management. Emily brings fundraising, communications, and convening expertise to advise and advocate for a diverse, cross-sector portfolio working in social justice, global health equity, education and economic empowerment, and environmentalism. Emily also spearheaded the launch of the Foundation’s student internship program, providing learning and mentorship to a next generation of equitable and values-driven philanthropists. Prior to joining Schooner, Emily oversaw communications at African Food and Peace Foundation (AFPF) and has experience in digital marketing, development, and hospitality. She holds a BA in International Relations from Boston University.
2021 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Estefanía Palomino serves as a Program Officer at the Helmsley Charitable Trust leading the global health access portfolio focused on increasing access to high-quality NCD care in Low- and Middle-Income countries. Prior to joining Helmsley, she served as a Program Manager at the Wyss Foundation developing and managing women’s health and rights projects in multiple Latin American countries.
Estefanía builds on her personal experiences as a Latina immigrant leading complex portfolios of work in the United States to create partnerships with organizations and leaders in Central Asia, Europe, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
She currently serves on the boards of both the International Youth Alliance for Family Planning (IYAFP) and the Colombian health startup, Bive. She is also an expert advisor for the Gratitude Network, a social enterprise accelerator. Estefania is a recurring judge of the final round of the annual Big Ideas contest hosted by UC Berkeley. She is a certified leadership coach and member of the Diversity and Inclusion committee of the Institute of Coaching at McLean, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School.
In 2015, Estefania was selected as an Aspen Ideas scholar and as one of the “10 Young Leaders Who Are Creating A Better World” by Johnson & Johnson and the Huffington Post. In 2017, Estefania was one of the finalists for the Buffett Institute Award for Emerging Global Leaders. Her work at the Helmsley Charitable Trust was featured in the BBC StoryWorks documentary “Living without Limits” and won first place at the 2020 WHO Film Festival.
Estefania holds a law degree from Universidad de Los Andes, a master’s degree in International Law and Settlement of Disputes from the United Nations University for Peace, and an LL.M in Global Health Law from Georgetown University Law Center.
2021 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Akosua Ampofo Siever has more than 13 years of experience in international community development and fundraising. Originally from Ghana, Akosua grew-up in Kenya and Tanzania in a family of development practitioners. This early immersion raised questions for her around inclusive community-driven project design and longer-term social, environmental and economic impacts. Akosua’s experience in Tanzania has spurned a lifelong commitment to improve the quality of life of disenfranchised women, youth and their families living in resource-poor contexts. To this end, Akosua has collaborated with senior leadership of international development and community-based organizations, foundations, donor agencies, and local government, to develop and implement community-led programs to disrupt systems that perpetuate poverty and inequality among marginalized groups.
Currently Akosua is a Senior Partnerships Manager at Root Capital. She also serves on the Board of Directors at the Boston Women’s Fund. At Root Capital, Akosua leads the strategy for building meaningful and long-lasting relationships with Root Capital’s institutional partners. These partnerships support Root Capital’s mission to transform rural communities by investing in the growth of agricultural businesses. At the Boston Women’s Fund, Akosua’s responsibilities include establishing the identity and direction of the Fund; ensuring necessary resources to maintain the fiscal health of the organization and the achievement of the Fund’s program goals; providing program oversight; and participating in all board operations. The Fund supports women and girl-led community-based organizations and grassroots initiatives to create a society based on racial, economic and social justice.
Before joining Root Capital, Akosua worked with several organizations including Africare, World Education, and the Massachusetts Public Health Association. Akosua holds BA and MA degrees from Clark University in Worcester, MA and The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, in Waltham, MA.
2019 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
2019 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
Ada Williams Prince has more than 15 years of experience of working on social impact globally and domestically. She currently leads program strategy on adolescent mental health at Pivotal Ventures. Prior to joining Pivotal, Ada was a Program Officer for the Marguerite Casey Foundation in Seattle where she was responsible for grant making to end family poverty, and promote racial equity. Before working with MCF, Ada was the Director of Special Projects for OneAmerica, where she directed their women’s rights policy program focusing on immigrant women and girls.
Ada has worked with many organizations working on the wellbeing and rights of all people (particularly women and girls) including Senior Advocacy Officer at the Women’s Refugee Commission in New York, the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Survivors in Brussels, Belgium, and for Concern Worldwide, Plan International and Save the Children, in London. Additionally, she has worked with Refugees International, and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance/USAID, and domestically with and for girls of color at PBS TV show Bill Nye the Science Guy.
She holds BA and MA degrees from the School for International Training in Brattleboro, VT and the University of Bradford in West Yorkshire, England.
Ada has served on the boards at Neighborhood House and the Refugee Women’s Alliance in Seattle, and was chair of the board of directors of Wandsworth Women’s Aid UK, a domestic violence shelter. Currently she serves on the board of PAI (a global reproductive health organization), citiesRISE and Crisis Text Line.
2019 Black Fox Fellow
Bio
A native of Peru, Katherine Zavala leads Thousand Currents’ programs in Latin America and has played a leading role in amplifying innovative local models and solutions in women’s rights, food sovereignty, and economic justice to key philanthropic audiences in U.S. and Europe, including millennials and diaspora groups. She is an experienced alliance-builder, connecting organizations to share analysis, take joint action, and advance multiple pathways for social justice. Katherine has worked alongside AFEDES, an indigenous women-led organization in Guatemala (and a Thousand Currents partner), for 5 months to support their economic empowerment program; and spent six weeks learning from the Movement of People Affected by Dams, a national social movement in Brazil. She has also written numerous articles and blogs that champion indigenous cosmovision and activism, and highlight how indigenous women’s leadership and resilience is at the heart of dignified livelihoods and a sustainable ecosystem. Katherine was the co-chair for the Latin American Funders Working Group from 2010 to 2015, hosted at the International Human Rights Funders Group. Katherine earned a Master’s in International Relations from San Francisco State University and a Bachelor’s in Hospitality Management from Florida International University.
