2021 NCRP Impact Awards Selection Committee
In 2021, Impact Awardees will be chosen by a selection committee composed of nonprofit and philanthropic leaders, including NCRP board, grantmaking supporters, nonprofit members and other close allies. Facilitated by NCRP staff with the support of 2 co-chairs, the committee will engage in a closed nominations and review process to select 4 winners. For more on these program updates and other ways to get involved, read the committee announcement. Winners will be announced in Fall 2021.
Committee Members
Committee Members
Nikki Brown-Booker (@BorealisPhil)
Program Officer, Disability Inclusion Fund
Borealis Philanthropy
Nikki Brown-Booker is the program officer for the Disability Inclusion Fund at Borealis Philanthropy. As a person with a disability and a biracial woman, she has been interested in the intersection of disability justice and racial justice.
Her mother emigrated from the Philippines and was a domestic worker and her father was a professional chef and a long-term member of Service Employees International Union. She was taught at a young age that justice is a human right.
She has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and is a licensed marriage and family therapist. Most recently she was the executive director for Easy Does It Emergency Services, a nonprofit that provides emergency services for people with disabilities and seniors in Berkeley, California. She has also been doing organizing work with Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network and helped pass the California Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.
Borealis Philanthropy is a grantmaking supporter of NCRP.
Jennifer Epps-Addison (@jeppsaddison and @popdemoc)
Network President and Co-Executive Director
The Center for Popular Democracy and CPD Action
Jennifer Epps-Addison serves as the president and co-executive director of The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and CPD Action’s network of partner organizations throughout the country. Jennifer leads CPD’s racial justice campaigns and works closely with its network of local affiliates. Jennifer boasts over 20 years of community organizing experience, advancing systems-change campaigns for economic and racial justice.
Prior to joining CPD, Epps-Addison was the chief program officer for the Liberty Hill Foundation, a social justice foundation in Los Angeles that funds grassroots community organizing campaigns for social change. A native of Milwaukee, Epps-Addison helped coordinate the Fight for $15 campaign as the executive director of Wisconsin Jobs Now.
Epps-Addison is the recipient of the 2013 Edna Award from the Berger-Marks Foundation, which honors an outstanding young woman each year for her leadership in fueling social change. In the same year, she was named an Activist to Watch by Bill Moyers. She earned her B.A. in Political Science and Women’s Studies and her J.D. from the University of Wisconsin.
Prior to her return to organizing, Jennifer was a trial attorney in the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s Office. Jennifer sits on the board of directors for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, United For Respect, Be A Hero PAC and Step Up Louisiana.
The Center for Popular Democracy is a nonprofit member of NCRP.
Jorge Gutierrez (@familiatqlm)
Executive Director
Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement
Jorge Gutierrez is an UndocuQueer organizer born in Nayarit, Mexico, and was raised in Santa Ana, California. He is the founder of Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement, a national trans and queer Latinx organization organizing at the intersections of immigrant and queer rights and racials justice.
In addition, he has co-founded the California Immigrant Youth Justice Alliance, the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project, and Mijente.
Taryn Higashi
Executive Director
Unbound Philanthropy
Since 2008, Taryn has served as the executive director of Unbound Philanthropy. She is also a member of the advisory committee for the International Migration Initiative at the Open Society Foundations, and a member of the advisory board for the Receiving Communities Initiative created by Welcoming America.
From 1997 to 2008, Taryn worked at the Ford Foundation where she managed the migrant and refugee rights portfolio and served as deputy director of the human rights unit. From 1999 to 2008, Taryn served as a board member of Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees, where she was co-chair from 1999-2005.
In 2009, Taryn, together with her colleague Geraldine Mannion of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, received the Robert W. Scrivner Award for Creative Grantmaking for founding the Four Freedoms Fund, a funder collaborative. In 2008, Taryn and Geri also received the 40th Anniversary Community Change Championship Award from the Center for Community Change.
Unbound Philanthropy received an NCRP Impact Award in 2019 and is a grantmaking supporter of NCRP.
Daniel Lee (@flybyboy and @LeviStraussFdn)
Executive Director
Levi Strauss Foundation
Daniel Lee is executive director of the Levi Strauss Foundation. He joined Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&CO.), and the Levi Strauss Foundation in 2003 as a community affairs manager for the Asia Pacific Division in Singapore, where he managed and implemented corporate social responsibility programs, employee volunteerism and grantmaking in 3 global giving areas: HIV/AIDS, worker rights and asset building.
Subsequently, he relocated to San Francisco and assumed the role of director of global grantmaking programs. Lee has extensive experience with international non-governmental organizations in the fields of human rights, HIV/AIDS and social justice.
Before joining LS&Co., he served as senior program officer for Asia and Pacific at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and on the founding board of the Massachusetts Asian AIDS Prevention Project. Mr. Lee currently serves on the International Advisory Board of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice and the Asia-Oceania advisory panel of the Global Fund for Women. He received an B.A. in Religion and History from Princeton University and a Master of Divinity from Harvard University.
Daniel is vice-chair of NCRP’s board, and Levi Strauss Foundation received an NCRP Impact Award in 2013 and is a grantmaking supporter of NCRP.
Vivek (Vik) Malhotra (@vmalhotra_)
Strategy and Organizational Development Consultant
Vivek Malhotra recently served as the Ford Foundation’s director for Equality and Justice. He oversaw programming for the foundation’s initiatives to advance immigrant and migrant rights, racial justice and minority rights, and civil and criminal justice reform.
Prior to joining the Ford Foundation in 2011, Mr. Malhotra held numerous leading positions at the American Civil Liberties Union, including advocacy and policy counsel with the national office, based in New York where he developed and led nationwide strategies on immigrant rights and racial justice through a comprehensive program of policy advocacy, public education and litigation.
Mr. Malhotra began his career as a litigation associate with the law firm of Loeb & Loeb LLP in Los Angeles. He is a graduate of New York University’s School of Law and of Pomona College.
Vik is the treasurer of NCRP’s board.
Sudha Nandagopal (@svpi)
CEO
Social Venture Partners International
Sudha Nandagopal is an organizer, facilitator, strategist and movement builder who focuses on democratizing systems of power and shifting power outward to those most affected by injustice and oppression. Her career includes leadership roles in strategic communications, international organizing, program design, policy creation and political campaigns. Through this work and her leadership in social, environmental and racial justice organizations, Sudha has developed expertise in multi-sector stakeholder engagement, networks, collaborative problem solving and building power with communities of color, immigrants and refugees.
As CEO of Social Venture Partners International, Sudha cultivates and expands a philanthropic network to catalyze more resources to communities around the globe, demonstrate new ways for philanthropy to share power and wealth, and build stronger relationships between philanthropists and communities.
Sudha consults for city governments, organizations and foundations to identify ways to shift power dynamics and develop frameworks for collaborative governance. She’s a self-described “network & narrative nerd” and believes that these approaches are the ways forward for systems change, innovation, and global collaboration. Grist magazine recognized Sudha as one of 50 “innovators, organizers, and visionaries who will lead us toward a more sustainable future.”
Puget Sound Business Journal recently recognized Sudha as one of the region’s 40 under 40 for her leadership in philanthropy and the social change sector. Sudha graduated from Cornell University. She is the third daughter of immigrant parents from India and grew up in Spokane, Washington.
Shaady Salehi (@shaadys and @TrustBasedPhil)
Director
Trust-Based Philanthropy Project
Shaady Salehi is a strategist, facilitator and network builder who has dedicated nearly 20 years to advancing social impact. She currently serves as the director of the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, a 5-year learning and advocacy initiative to make trust-based practices the norm in the philanthropic sector.
She also is principal and founder of Skyview Strategies, a social impact consultancy for nonprofits, foundations and changemakers. Previously, Shaady was managing director of Distribution and Impact at ITVS, where she led a team to advance the reach and impact of documentaries on public television.
Prior to ITVS, she was executive director of Active Voice, a pioneering organization that uses storytelling to catalyze social change. Shaady is a 2014 Aspen Institute Fellow and sits on the board of Let It Ripple, a nonprofit that experiments with collaborative filmmaking for the common good. She holds an M.S. in Strategic Communications from Columbia University and an M.A. in Anthropology from University of California, Davis.
Erik R. Stegman (@ErikStegman and @NativeGiving)
Executive Director
Native Americans in Philanthropy
Erik R. Stegman (Carry the Kettle First Nation Nakoda) serves as executive director of Native Americans in Philanthropy, a national organization advocating for stronger and more meaningful investments by the philanthropic sector in tribal communities.
Previously, he served as the executive director for the Center for Native American Youth at the Aspen Institute. He has held positions at the Center for American Progress on their Poverty to Prosperity team, as majority staff counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and in the Obama administration as a policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Education.
Erik began his career in Washington, D.C., at the National Congress of American Indians Policy Research Center. He holds a J.D. from UCLA School of Law, an M.A. in American Indian Studies from UCLA’s Graduate Division, and a B.A. from Whittier College.
Native Americans in Philanthropy is a partner in the CHANGE Philanthropy network, of which NCRP is also a partner.
Tim Wallace (@LogicForGood and @LegalAidJustice)
Director of Development
Legal Aid Justice Center
Tim (he/him) joined Legal Aid Justice Center (LAJC)’s development team in January 2014 in a role focused on grant writing and database management. He became director of development in June 2016. A beloved donor said it best when she told Tim that “if a nerd can do this job, you’re that nerd.”
Tim is proud of having hired a top-notch development team and prouder of having, for the most part, gotten out of their way as they’ve built critically important relationships of trust with supporters throughout Virginia. Tim sees his job as making sure that the organization and his team have the tools they need to do their jobs with excellence.
Prior to joining LAJC, Tim served as the director of development for Cabrini Green Legal Aid, an organization that advocates with Chicagoans negatively impacted by the criminal justice system. He graduated with an English degree from the University of Virginia in 2004.
LAJC is a nonprofit member of NCRP.
