Authentic Community Engagement Part 3: the Power of Collaboration with Proximate Leaders

In the third webinar of our “Authentic Community Engagement” series, we will explore key pathways for building and nurturing meaningful relationships and partnerships with a diverse network of grantees. This session will expose community members to stories and tools that will leave them better equipped to design, build and sustain partnerships with proximate leaders guided by the core belief that proximity is both expertise and power.

Leaders from New Profit will share a three-part adapted framework for philanthropy for building depth of trust and familiarity with proximate leaders by considering truth-telling, redesign and equity.

In this particular moment of fundamental disruption as social distancing practices make it harder to build proximity, it is more important now than ever to build coalitions with leaders most proximate to communities with whom we seek to partner.

By building authentic relationships with proximate leaders, we can share power and be guided and informed by these partnerships in order to build more just and equitable systems led by key stakeholders and communities most systematically affected. 

Speakers: 

Tulaine Montgomery
Managing Partner
New Profit

Tulaine Montgomery is an accomplished social entrepreneur, educator and community organizer. She is a managing partner and member of the executive team at New Profit. As a member of the founding team that launched New Profit, Tulaine provides strategic and financial support to many of our nation’s most promising social innovations. She leads New Profit’s Inclusive Impact, a comprehensive, sector-wide systems change strategy designed to increase investment and capacity building support for leaders of color. Additionally, Tulaine is a member of New Profit’s Systems Solutions team and serves as a lead spokesperson for New Profit at a time of growing dialogue in philanthropy about the unprecedented opportunities and challenges facing the sector. She is host and executive producer of “What Had To Be True,” New Profit’s podcast and online forum for conversations with “America’s Problem Solvers”- the grounded visionaries and practical idealists working hard to make things better.

Shruti Sehra
Managing Partner, Education Portfolio
New Profit

Shruti supports the capacity-building of education organizations and facilitates collaboratives of social entrepreneurs, funders, researchers, policy influencers and opinion leaders to fundamentally reimagine the future of teaching and learning in America. In addition, Shruti currently serves on the boards of New Teacher Center and PowerMyLearning, supporting their efforts to create and execute against aggressive plans to accelerate their impact.

Shruti’s family has a history of giving back to communities in different ways with courage and perseverance. Among other things, Shruti’s grandmother enlisted a local gynecologist to work with the domestic worker community to provide education and assistance with family planning and to help break the cycle of poverty perpetuated by high fertility rates. Shruti’s father was born in Multan, a region of South Asia known for producing people with courage in the face of all kinds of danger. This combined background led her to New Profit where she now has the opportunity to work daily to drive poverty alleviation and social justice.

Shruti holds a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from MIT, an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and an MPA from Harvard Kennedy School. She is a Pahara-Aspen Education Fellow.

This event is intended for members and education grantmakers. There is no cost to attend this Grantmakers for Education program.

Monthly Master Class

The purpose of the Monthly Master Class is to engage in deeper learning together and practice talking across difference. On the first Friday of each month, Grantmakers for Education hosts an interview-based webinar. Each session is anchored by reflections from one to two members and a nonprofit or academic leader and includes time for questions and collaborative sense-making among presenters and attendees.