Iara Peng, founder of the Democratizing Philanthropy Project, is deeply committed to ensuring chronically underfunded organizations thrive through sustainable revenue. She has worked in nonprofits for over 25 years, building new programs and organizations within the sector and supporting emerging leaders. She recently also launched JustFund.us, an innovative online portal that connects grantmakers directly to organizations to help move resources more quickly while facilitating greater trust, transparency, and accountability across funder communities. She is also the founder of Prism, an independent and nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color that tells stories from the ground up to disrupt harmful narratives and to inform movements for justice.

Jessie Hankins recently joined Democratizing Philanthropy Project as their Program Manager. Jessie is passionate about seeking out the root causes to systemic injustice and working collaboratively to come up with innovative solutions. She brings ten years of experience managing frontline, social justice organizations in the North Bay Area of California. For the past five years Jessie managed and evaluated a leadership program for LGBTQ+ youth as part of a state-wide initiative to reduce mental health disparities for underserved populations. Prior to that she built and managed restorative justice programs for justice-involved young adults in Sonoma County, CA. Jessie has a Master’s degree from Sonoma State University in public administration and non-profit management. She currently lives in Savannah, GA with her wife and dog, and is loving exploring her new home.

Soorah Hassan is an Associate at the Democratizing Philanthropy Project. She has a background in research and monitoring as well as project management in non-profits and NGOs. During her time at the United Nations, under the Office of Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect (R2P), she helped build The Plan of Action which aims at informing and advising the work of religious leaders and actors, as well as other relevant players, and providing options and recommendations for ways in which they can contribute to preventing incitement to violence. She is passionate about improving the lives of at-risk communities, refugees and displaced persons. Soorah has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from City University of New York (CUNY) School of Public Affairs and Urban Studies.

Blue Engine Collaborative has led end-to-end programming and coaching for the Democratizing Philanthropy Project 2021 pilot cohort and the ongoing state-based power building cohort, with each cohort designed to help six organizations, respectively, grow small dollar donors and overall organizational sustainability. In the completed pilot cohort, among other results, six teams generated almost $815,000 over six months from small donors (defined as donors whose annual contribution is less than $5,000) — representing an average of 257 percent growth in year-over-year revenue.

Cierra Hinton is a creative strategist; she centers imagination, play, and community in her work. She loves building with teams and individuals as they drive toward outcomes that matter in a way that is inclusive and authentic. She’s been a coach in several cohorts of the Facebook Accelerator program, and she coached in and helped lead the OSF-Ford Democratizing Philanthropy Project cohort in 2021 and the ongoing State-Based Power Building Cohort.

In addition to coaching and consulting, Cierra is the Executive Director-Publisher at Scalawag, a Southern, movement journalism organization. Before Scalawag, Cierra was an individual giving officer at a number of education non-profits including Teach For America where she was celebrated as the top fundraiser for their national alumni campaign. Fundraising is yet another manifestation of Cierra’s life purpose: as a capacity builder, it is her personal mission to find, gather, and distribute resources to folks that share her identities and have been historically disinherited, namely Black, Indigenous, queer, women and femme identifying people, and folks from rural and low-income communities.

alyzza may is an angelic troublemaker, moving in the lineages of cultural workers, popular educators, and community builders to get us and the land free. They bring over a decade of grassroots fundraising and training experience, most recently showcasing this skill with Greensboro Mutual Aid. Co-creating aspects of the solidarity and new economies has been a focus of theirs, having helped bring the first participatory budgeting process to the South in Greensboro, North Carolina, deepening the field of cooperative economics, curating over a dozen community-engaged murals, and most recently helping to launch Freedom Fridges. In addition to this you will find alyzza working as the Development Director at Press On, as a Development Officer at Scalawag, and closely with the National Council of Elders. alyzza is a former member of Cakalak Thunder, plant daddy, and a proud Titi to two puntastic twins.

Mission Partners uses the power of communications to advance social justice.

With decades of experience in social impact communications, and working at the unique intersection of PR, policy, and philanthropy, Mission Partners work side-by-side with organizations, as trusted partners and colleagues, along their journeys to build more equitable and just systems and communities. They use a full range of strategic communications– messaging, marketing, issues management and strategy building, to help advance the clients’ visions for the future.​

They've helped organizations refine their strategies, increase their impact, and amplify their stories. As well as track and measure its progress every step of the way. Mission Partners significantly invest their own dollars and time back into the clients they represent to strengthen a powerful idea that will move us toward a better world.

Carrie Fox is the founder and CEO of Mission Partners, a woman-owned strategic communications firm and Certified B Corporation that guides high-potential nonprofits, foundations, and socially responsible corporations in realizing their greatest social impact. Since launching her first firm in 2004, she has guided hundreds of organizations around the world to lead with purpose, fueling organizations and their missions forward in new and more impactful ways. Her signature approach to asset-based messaging—leading with a community’s strengths rather than its weaknesses—has been applied to dozens of social impact organizations, challenging stereotypes and breaking bias in the process. Carrie served as the creative visionary behind a nationwide campaign to transform the foster care system for young people aging out of care and she was the lead communications strategist behind a $10 million prize competition aimed at advancing global technology for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Her strategic communications work focuses deeply on issues of community— from social justice to sustainability, children’s health, higher education, and workforce development. Carrie is a founding signatory of the #WeTheChange declaration to build business for good, and a founding member of the Purpose Collaborative, a national network of communications thought-leaders and industry experts that work together to provide impactful problem solving in touch with the current needs of today’s purpose-driven businesses. Her signature conversation series, Mission Forward, has featured Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists, MacArthur Fellows, and some of the nation’s most sought-after philanthropy leaders. She is a Stevie Woman in Business Winner, a SmartCEO Washington Brava Award winner, a WWPR Woman of the Year Honoree, and a winner of PRWeek’s ’40 under 40′. She recently concluded her term on the Advisory Board of the Greater Washington Community Foundation and currently serves on the Board of Trustees for Loyola University Maryland, and as a Girl Scouts Troop Leader. She is the co-author of Adventures in Kindness: 52 Awesome Adventures for Kids to Build a Better World, which she wrote with her 10-year old daughter Sophia.

Carrie worked in several public affairs and public relations firms, including Prism Public Affairs, before launching her own. Those early career experiences, coupled with her unique career start as director of communications and spokesperson for Ripken Baseball, which was founded to manage Hall of Famer Cal Ripken, Jr.’s many efforts, including his nationally recognized youth baseball initiative, helped her hone a unique blend of services that sit at the intersection of public relations, policy and philanthropy. Carrie is an engaged resident of Rockville, MD, where she resides with her husband and two elementary age daughters.

Jessica is the Managing Director at Mission Partners, where she positions both the firm and its clients for transformational growth and success. Jessica’s wide ranging set of skills include complex project management, writing and editing, event production, and policy communications. Through equitable operations and client work, Jessica seeks to harness Mission Partners’ business model and day to day decision making as a force for good. Prior to joining Mission Partners, Jessica served as the Executive Assistant to the Dean at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. In this role, she was responsible for maintaining internal operations for the school and providing comprehensive strategic support for University leadership. Jessica also helped manage a wide range of events – including planning and executing the McCourt School’s annual commencement ceremony.

Jessica received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Virginia and holds a certificate in Project Management from Georgetown University. Outside of work, she serves on the Young Professionals Board for Girls on the Run of Montgomery County and as Events Chair for B Local Mid-Atlantic. In her free time, Jessica can often be found exploring the outdoors, enjoying live music, or watching a UVA game.

Allison Kadin brings over a decade of experience in strategy, creative production, communications, fundraising, and project operations to mission-driven organizations and collectives. After a tenure as a Senior Marketing Manager at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), where she led hundreds of campaigns to promote live performances and internationally renowned festivals, she parlayed her passion for storytelling into social impact. At A/B Partners, she developed creative teams and drove client strategy for organizations that included Economic Security Project, Kataly Foundation, and Southern Poverty Law Center.

She merges her experience in arts management and desire to elevate social issues with creative engagement projects like Forward Union Fair (an annual, multi-day event that brings together artists and social impact organizations) and boundary-pushing works by theater and dance companies in New York City. She was selected to be part of Race Forward’s first cohort of the Racial Equity in the Arts Innovation Lab and was an International Society for the Performing Arts Global Fellow. She serves on the boards of Ariel Rivka Dance and AENY – Spanish Artists in New York.

She graduated from Wesleyan University with a BA in English, and recently received an MBA from Baruch’s Zicklin School of Business. She is based in Brooklyn, NY. When not attending or producing performances, she can be found taking long walks through new neighborhoods with her dog Roo.

Elena Hilton is a Senior Strategist at Mission Partners, where she guides clients toward achieving their greatest impact through a strategic communications lens. In her role, she leads on project management, message development, research. analysis, writing, and editing. Elena brings with her a varied background in social media strategy, digital media publishing, and journalism. Before joining Mission Partners in 2019, she spent two years in New York as an assistant editor, writer, and social media manager for Esquire.com at Hearst Magazines. While at Esquire, she helped guide the site’s overall content strategy from both a social media and an SEO perspective.

As a freelance writer and reporter, her work has been published in Glamour, NBC News, InStyle, Bustle, and Rolling Stone. Prior to her career start in digital media, Elena also interned for Rock the Vote in Washington, D.C. and with MTV’s Public Affairs department in New York. Elena graduated Summa Cum Laude from University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications in 2016 with a focus in digital media and business management. In her spare time in the Washington, D.C. area, Elena volunteers with Horton’s Kids and the University of Florida’s DC Gator Club.

Rachel Weber is a Strategist at Mission Partners, where she guides purpose-driven organizations in realizing their greatest social impact. By centering equity, building trust, and co-creating effective and creative communications strategies, Rachel is committed to helping clients achieve transformational impact. Rachel comes to Mission Partners with a background in political communications and environmental and climate justice campaign organizing. Most recently, Rachel led the North Carolina media and communications strategy for NextGen America, the largest youth voter turnout organization in the nation. Prior to her work on the 2020 elections, she was a campaigner at Dogwood Alliance, where she worked in coalitions and communities across the U.S. South to advance forest protection and climate justice. She also directed outreach canvasses and campaigns to advance clean energy and environmental protections with Environment North Carolina.

Rachel earned her B.A. in Public Policy Studies at Duke University, where she co-founded the Duke Climate Coalition and got her start in activism while campaigning for divestment from fossil fuels. Outside of work, Rachel remains active in North Carolina politics and organizing, and she serves as a board member of Toxic Free NC, an organization that advances environmental justice and public health by fighting pesticide pollution and exposure. Rachel is based in Durham, NC, where she enjoys the greenways, parks, and other special places North Carolina has to offer.