Staff
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR
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
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR OF FINANCE & OPERATIONS
Yolanda Gantz is an Atlanta, Georgia native and proud wife and mother to 4 adults. Yolanda has over 20 years of experience in finance and project management. She comes to Donors of Color with a passion for finance as well as mentoring and advocacy. In her spare time, she enjoys swimming, running, and family time – when life permits!
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR
ISABELLE H. LEIGHTON, ACTING EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR MEMBERSHIP AND GROWTH
With 20 years of experience growing social justice and movement-oriented organizations, Isabelle has created successful strategies and campaigns which have raised over $30 million through engagement with intergenerational, cross-class and multi-ethnic donors, foundations, and business communities. Most recently, Isabelle worked with social justice think tank, Political Research Associates (PRA), to scale its research and strategy capacity to support communities targeted by racist and misogynist forces during the Trump administration. Prior to PRA, Isabelle was the founding director of Equality Fund, a philanthropic advocacy project launched by Asian Americans for Equality to organize donors and community leaders to address the growing need to grow economic opportunity and create equitable, sustainable communities in NYC. Isabelle served as NYC co-chair of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy for six years, and currently sits on the Boards of Solidago Foundation, Open City Labs, and The Institute for Research on Male Supremacism.
Isabelle lives in Cambridge, MA with her family. Rooted in spiritual practices that center compassion and joy,Isabelle actively seeks opportunities to learn and contribute to social justice activism focused on food, death, environment, aging, and improving the health and well-being of LGBTQ communities. Isabelle’s perfect day of work starts with her bullet journal, a cappuccino, the latest blueprint for philanthropy at the ready, sunshine and plants on her back porch.
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR
MOHINI NARASIMHAN, PROGRAM MANAGER
Mohini Maya Narasimhan is fueled by a fundamental belief in and commitment to transformative, grassroots organizing. Her work ranges from campaign strategy to messaging and storytelling to ethnographic research. Previously, Mohini campaigned with a coalition to advocate for safe and accessible public transit and designed messaging strategies to help mayoral administrations around the world build public support for equitable, just, and climate-centered recoveries from the COVID-19 pandemic. Born and raised in San Jose and the greater Bay Area, Mohini’s work is rooted in lessons from her immigrant parents, who provided opportunity, grounding, and spirituality to her and her personhood. Mohini is happiest when she’s building and deepening relationships with friends and finds joy in small daily moments, such as swimming in the ocean or making jewelry.
senior advisors
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR
NITIKA RAJ, donor learning CONSULTANT
Nitika Raj is an independent consultant, coach, donor organizer and writer coming out of anti-violence, racial justice, and economic justice movements. She is the founder and principal of Moksh Consulting, a Certified Professional Coach, and 21/64 Certified Advisor for philanthropic giving. Nitika has been working with communities of color for over a decade on moving wealth in alignment with social justice values and movements. She spent four meaningful years on staff at Resource Generation as Racial Justice Director and National Organizer of young people of color with wealth. During the past five years she has had the honor of being a foundational consultant for the Donors of Color Network, contributing her donor organizing skills to building shared values and frameworks through story-telling, political education and community building spaces. Nitika has authored a landscape analysis report titled An Unprecedented Opportunity: Organizing Next Generation Donors and Trustees to Practice Effective Social Change Philanthropy (2019) for the Andrus Family Fund.
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR
ISIS KRAUSE, organizational development CONSULTANT
Isis Krause is the founder and chief strategist of Knead Partners, a social impact strategy shop that works with ambitious initiatives and organizations in the philanthropy and social good sector. Through co-design and facilitation, Isis helps “knead” together dozens of viewpoints into powerful plans for actions. She has developed dozens of strategic plans, facilitated more than 200 strategy workshops and large-scale convenings, and led the visioning and implementation of award-winning programs and campaigns for nonprofits, Fortune 100 brands, and network-driven initiatives across the country. She’s launched multiple new impact organizations from idea to funding to implementation, and her work has been profiled in The New York Times, Inside Philanthropy, and ForbesWomen. She believes in the power of values-aligned groups of people to make systemic change, specifically for justice. Isis lives in Los Angeles, is a proud mama of two toddlers, and always seems to have a loaf of bread rising somewhere in the house—much to her family’s delight!
YOLANDA GANTZ, DIRECTOR
DANIELLE DEANE-RYAN, climate CONSULTANT
Danielle Deane-Ryan has devoted her career to her passion for forging equitable climate crisis solutions and has held executive roles in multiple sectors. She is a senior advisor to philanthropic institutions including the Libra Foundation and the Donors of Color Network. She is also currently a National Academies of Science Deep Decarbonization Committee member. Previously, Danielle directed the Inclusive Clean Economy Program at The Nathan Cummings Foundation. She was a co-author of Solar with Justice in collaboration with the Clean Energy States Alliance. Danielle served in the Obama Administration at the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. She was Green 2.0’s founding executive director; launched the New Constituencies for Environmental Program at the Hewlett Foundation; and managed the Commission to Engage African Americans on Energy, Climate Change, and the Environment at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. Danielle has an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in Environment and Development, and a B.A. from Williams College in Political Economy with an Environmental Studies Concentration. She is originally from the beautiful twin-island republic of Trinidad and Tobago.
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.