Over the past five years, CFF has embraced a different way of operating that is rooted in feminist principles, is responsive to movement vision and strategy, and is less centered on the donor-to-donor conversations that are often the norm in the philanthropic sector. For CFF, it has been critical to ensure that donors who are collaborative partners in the fund can play their important role of expanding resources and sustainability for the movement to end violence, while not speaking for, or on behalf of, movements. CFF’s donor partners have agreed that CFF, as an intermediary feminist funder, is a useful space to prototype expanding the power of movement activists in setting the strategic direction of a philanthropic organization, and this Advisory Council is a meaningful step forward in the service of that vision.
Values of dignity, safety, humility, deep relationship, collaboration, and trust all inform Collective Future Fund’s work. Thus, listening to, learning with, and being in community with movement partners, including grantees, have been central ways for CFF to enact these values since its inception.
Collective Future Fund is thrilled to announce that three long-time women-of-color movement leaders will be part of CFF’s inaugural Advisory Council. These leaders, representing three grantee partner organizations, include:
Dr. Connie Wun, Co-Founder & President, AAPI Women Lead
Joanne N. Smith, Founder & CEO, Girls for Gender Equity
Mónica Ramirez, Founder & President, Justice for Migrant Women
The inaugural Advisory Council will also continue to include Collaborative Donor Partners. Celiné Justice, representing Pivotal Ventures, and Adeline Azrack, representing Fondation CHANEL, will fill these roles.
The purpose of the Advisory Council is to provide strategic guidance and feedback to CFF’s team on its high-level direction and programs, including grantmaking and advocacy to the philanthropic sector. The Council members will also serve as ambassadors for CFF in critical policy and donor advocacy spaces. With their collaboration, CFF will continue to mobilize resources for survivor-centered movements to end gendered, sexualized, and racialized violence.
As CFF is a fiscally-sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA), the Council will not replace RPA’s role providing fiscal oversight, grants management and approval, and human resources for CFF, and will not duplicate the role of RPA’s Board.
CFF Inaugural Advisory Council Members:
Connie Wun, PhD, is the Executive Director and co-founder of AAPI Women Lead. For nearly 30 years, Dr. Wun has worked on issues related to racial and gender justice. She is a writer with publications in academic books, journals, and mainstream press including the anthology, Antiblackness, as well as Educational Policy; Race, Ethnicity and Education; Critical Sociology; and Elle magazine. She is a co-editor for the anthology, Abolition for the People, with Colin Kaepernick and Christopher Petrella. Dr. Wun has been a keynote speaker and panelist across multiple platforms and has been featured on Democracy Now!, MSNBC, NPR, ABC Nightline News, NBC Asian America, local news, as well as a range of podcasts. She is a former fellow for the National Science Foundation, Open Society Foundation’s Soros Justice program, American Association for University Women, UC Berkeley Chancellor’s Office, and more. She’s also been recognized by California API Legislative Caucus with the 2021 Excellence in Civil Rights Award and by GoldHouse with an A100 award. Connie is a former sex worker, high school and college educator, anti-sexual assault advocate and organizer. She continues to co-facilitate community-driven research projects on the intersections of race, gender, and state violence with organizations across the U.S. and its territories. Dr. Wun, who was born in Oakland, CA, is a child and grandchild of powerful Vietnamese refugees and freedom fighters. She was raised by a brilliant mother from whom she learned to commit to racial solidarity and liberation struggles across the globe. Dr. Wun is a disabled queer survivor who has been practicing yoga for nearly 25 years. She is a yoga instructor with a daily meditation practice and is an avid student of Muay Thai and kickboxing.
Joanne N. Smith (she/her) is the founding President & CEO of Girls for Gender Equity (GGE). She moves GGE closer to its mission through strategic advocacy, development, and leadership cultivation. Mrs. Smith is a first-generation, Queer Haitian woman and New York native. A staunch human rights advocate, she has co-authored Hey Shorty: A Guide to Combating Sexual Harassment and Violence in Schools and on the Streets.
Smith’s work to combat sexual violence is featured in the documentary Anita: Speak Truth to Power and the docuseries Surviving R. Kelly Part II & III: The Reckoning & The Final Chapter, aired on Lifetime and Netflix in 2020 and 2023. Her culture shift efforts continue in Pushout – The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools, a feature-length documentary that closely examines the educational, judicial, and societal disparities facing Black Girls. Featured in the 2021 & 2022 Nonprofit Power 100.
With public officials, philanthropic leaders, and nonprofit executives leading the sector in New York, Smith’s leadership helped facilitate a $40M commitment from government and philanthropy to invest in community-driven recommendations of the nation’s first Young Women’s Initiative. Smith co-founded The Black Girl Freedom Fund, a 10-year initiative to invest 1 Billion dollars into advancing Black girls and gender-expansive youth, and a member of Move to End Violence -an initiative designed to strengthen the collective capacity to end gender-based violence in the United States. Smith resides in Brooklyn, NY and Philadelphia, PA.
Mónica Ramírez is Founder & President of Justice for Migrant Women. Ramírez hails from a farmworker family that settled out of the migrant stream to live year-round in rural Ohio. She is a long-time advocate, organizer, social entrepreneur and attorney fighting to eliminate gender-based violence and secure gender equity. For over two decades, she has fought for the civil and human rights of women, children, workers, Latinos/as and immigrants. In 2003, Mónica created the first legal project in the United States dedicated to addressing gender discrimination against farmworker women, which she scaled to create Esperanza: The Immigrant Women’s Legal Initiative of the Southern Poverty Law Center. In addition to founding Justice for Migrant Women, she co-founded Alianza Nacional de Campesinos and served as President of their Board until 2018. In her capacity as Alianza’s Board President, Mónica wrote the letter that was published in TIME magazine from farmworker women to women in the entertainment industry. It has been credited with helping to spark the creation of the TIME’S UP movement. Mónica is recognized as a thought leader and prominent voice in the Latinx community. She has been awarded numerous awards for her work, including Harvard Kennedy School’s inaugural Gender Equity Changemaker Award, 2022 James Beard Leadership award, the Feminist Majority’s Global Women’s Rights Award, and inclusion on Forbes Mexico’s 2018 list of 100 Powerful Women, among other distinctions. Mónica is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago, The Ohio State University’s Moritz College of Law and Harvard Kennedy School.
Celiné Justice serves as Program Strategy Director for Centering Women & Girls of Color at Pivotal Ventures, leading a team that resources the work of movements fighting to end violence and advance economic justice through innovative grantmaking, deep trust, the power of convening, and a dedication to continuous listening, learning, and responding to the changing needs of those that hold immense power while also being held back by structural and historical barriers. Prior to Pivotal, Celiné served as the Founder and President of Rooted Justice Solutions, a small consulting firm in which she supported a roster of clients on their philanthropic journeys including work with Moore Philanthropy, Abigail E. Disney, and the Warner Music Group Social Justice Fund. She holds a B.A. from Brown University and joined the Pivotal Ventures team in 2021.
Adeline Azrack is the Managing Director, Americas for Fondation CHANEL, an international corporate foundation dedicated to improving the economic and social conditions of women and girls. Adeline also supports corporate initiatives, including diversity and inclusion, sustainability, and employee engagement and communications. Prior to joining the Foundation, she spent over 10 years working with the UN, governments and NGOs in the Caribbean, South Asia, East and West Africa and the United States as a specialist and team manager in social justice and health justice movements, global maternal and child health, health economics and operational research and evaluation. In addition to her role at the Fondation CHANEL, she serves on the Steering Committee of the CARE Fund and the Board of the Hopital Albert Schweitzer in Haiti — a hospital and health justice organization in Deschapelles, Haiti. Adeline has a Masters in Public Health (Social Determinants of Health) from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health and a Bachelors of Arts in Cultural and Social Anthropology with a minor in Feminist Studies from Stanford University. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY with her family.
