EGA Leadership Transition Announcement

Dear Friends:

On behalf of the Environmental Grantmakers Association's Board of Directors, I am writing to share with you that, after 11 outstanding years as Executive Director, Rachel Leon will be leaving EGA to become Executive Director of the Park Foundation. During Rachel’s tenure, EGA has grown larger, more diverse, stronger and more impactful – as an organization and as a network. While we will miss Rachel deeply at EGA – and her boundless energy, vision, dedication, thoughtfulness, and skill – we also wish her well, and look forward to working together in new and different ways in her new role at Park Foundation, a long-time valued member of the EGA community. Click here to read Park Foundation's announcement message.

As we reflect on these 11 years, there are so many reasons to be grateful and proud, and I hope you’ll indulge my recounting a few. With Rachel at the helm, EGA:

Crafted a strong strategic framework, rooted in a vision of EGA as "a high impact network of environmental funders working to achieve a sustainable world". With member input, we refreshed our strategy in 2014, articulating key outcomes like: building EGA as a big tent, prioritizing a rich variety of voices and viewpoints both within environmental philanthropy and beyond, and enhancing members’ diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

Advanced racial equity. In the last decade, EGA has institutionalized and advanced racial equity internally and across our community. EGA’s staff is more diverse, and since 2016, our Board has been majority people of color. Our gatherings have consistently centered on themes of inclusion, belonging, and racial equity. EGA’s Tracking the Field research increasingly features tools and examples of members effectively shifting grantmaking to communities. And EGA has championed these ideas with colleagues beyond environmental philanthropy – for example, through engagement with the Affinity Equity Summit organized in 2018.

Became a stronger network. Under Rachel's leadership, we have enjoyed a growing membership and staff team, increasing engagement with our members, and more than doubling our budget. We now having amazingly strong staff hubs in both New York and California, and an innovative partnership with Blue Sky Funders Forum, a working group of EGA that advances stronger connections between people and nature.

Continually improved our gatherings and their value to members. Our signature gatherings, including the EGA Retreat, have always been fundamental to EGA membership. In the last decade, EGA kept raising the bar on what these gatherings achieve for learning, for field impact, and for building connections and our collective sense of belonging and shared community. Our most recent Federal Policy Briefing was the highest rated EGA event ever.

Launched important new programs, such as the Environmental Fellows Program (EFP), in partnership with Dr. Dorceta Taylor and the University of Michigan’s School of Environment and Sustainability. EFP’s long-term goal is to promote inclusion and diversity within EGA and the environmental community as a whole, and we are already seeing real impact. EFP has not only changed our own organization, but also the dozens of members foundations that have engaged and supported the program, furthering their own inclusion work as a result, and most importantly investing in the career trajectories of – so far – nearly 100 alumni of the program.

I know Rachel will be greatly missed by each of us on the Board, by the staff, and by the membership. Change is always hard. Yet, change is also a healthy part of how organizations adapt and grow into what a new moment requires of them.

With a strong Board, an exemplary staff team, and an engaged membership, I have every confidence EGA will rise to this challenge. We will also benefit from an experienced leader at the helm during this transition. Effective October 1, Franny Canfield, EGA’s Associate Director (and two-time acting Executive Director), will assume the role of Interim Executive Director.

In the next few weeks, the Board will form a search committee to oversee a national search for this opening. Stay tuned for more information as we launch the search, as we will depend on you, your networks, and your perspective to identify the right leader for EGA’s next chapter. Rachel will be here until November and will share her own reflections before she transitions with our beloved community.

Again, we cannot thank Rachel enough for all that she has given to EGA, and for all the ways we are better for it.

Best,

Mariella Puerto
Board Chair, Environmental Grantmakers Association
Climate Program Co-Director, Barr Foundation