Staff & consultants
ASHINDI MAXTON, Executive DIRECTOR
Ashindi Maxton is the Executive Director of the Donors of Color Network. Prior to this role, Ashindi served as an independent strategist and donor advisor in democracy reform, and social and racial justice. She has developed funding strategy informing more than $100 million in investments from foundations and individual donors including the Democracy Alliance, the Ford Foundation, and the Women Donors Network.
In addition to her work in philanthropy, Ashindi has served as the National Policy Director of the NAACP and the National Director of Political Partnerships for SEIU. In another life, Ashindi also served as the principal of an arts charter school and as a very happy bilingual Spanish 4th and 5th grade teacher. She was also a Fulbright Scholar to the Dominican Republic researching race consciousness in young children.
Ashindi currently serves on the boards of the Texas Organizing Project, Way to Win, and Voqal USA. She was recognized by Inside Philanthropy as “Donor Organizer of the Year” as a member of the co-founding team of the Donors of Color Network. She has also been listed three times to Washington Magazine’s “Young and the Guest List” of “forty and under geniuses, visionaries, crusaders and innovators shaping Washington’s future” and the “NAACP Power 40” list of most influential African-Americans under forty
ALAYAH GLENN, DEVELOPMENT & SPECIAL PROJECTS MANAGER
NAYANTARA PREMAKUMAR, COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER
MOHINI NARASIMHAN, PROGRAM MANAGER
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR OF FINANCE & OPERATIONS
NITIKA RAJ, CONSULTANT
DANIELLE DEANE-RYAN, CONSULTANT
ISIS KRAUSE, CONSULTANT
Co-FounderS & History
URVASHI VAID, CO-FOUNDER
Urvashi Vaid is an attorney and strategist who works in social justice movements.
Vaid is President of The Vaid Group LLC, a social innovation firm that works with global and domestic organizations to advance equity, justice and inclusion. Vaid is co-founder of the Donors of Color Network, the first cross-racial network connecting individuals of color to leverage their giving for racial equity; co-founder of the National LGBTQ Anti-Poverty Action Network, the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group, LPAC, the Equality Federation, the National Religious Leadership Roundtable, and the Creating Change Conference of the National LGBTQ Task Force, among other networks and projects.
Vaid has held leadership roles in academic, philanthropic, advocacy, and community-based organizations. She was Senior Fellow and Director of the Engaging Tradition Project at Columbia Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, exploring how tradition-based resistance inhibits projects to advance gender, sexual and racial equity. Prior to joining the Law School, Vaid was Senior Fellow at the Social Justice Sexuality Project at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
HALI LEE, Co-founder
Hali was born in Seoul, South Korea and grew up in Kansas City. She graduated from Princeton University, studied Buddhism at Mahidol University in Bangkok, Thailand, and received a Masters in Social Work from New York University. Hali has worked in many capacities and served on many boards, often combining a love of learning, the arts and equitable social change.
Hali is the founder of the Asian Women Giving Circle, which raises resources for Asian American women using the arts to bring about social change in their NYC communities. In fifteen years, the Circle has made grants of over one million dollars in support of eighty amazing projects. She is part of the co-design team that birthed Philanthropy Together in 2020, built to scale and strengthen the the burgeoning collective giving movement nationally. Currently, Hali participates in several philanthropy-sector initiatives, including the Impact Driven Philanthropy Collaborative at the Raikes Foundation, the Momentum Fund, and the decennial Deloitte/ Monitor Institute Philanthropy 2020.
Hali lives in Brooklyn, NY along with her dear husband, three college-age children, two cats and a big dog. In her free time, Hali loves to travel, read, play tennis and keep honeybees.