2023 Funders Institute Speakers - Funders Together to End Homelessness

A national network of funders supporting strategic, innovative, and effective solutions to homelessness

2023 Funders Institute Speakers

<<Return to the main Funders Institute page

Last updated: 07/14/2023

	Almas Sayeed Vice President, Public Partnerships Liberty Hill Foundation She/Her/Hers Almas is the Vice President of Public Partnerships at Liberty Hill Foundation. In this capacity, Almas develops partnerships with government and public entities to better build and serve communities and advance Liberty Hill’s vision of progressive change. Almas also guides the foundation’s economic justice and housing portfolios. Almas brings more than 15 years of experience to the foundation, working at the intersection of organizing, legislative policy change and litigation in housing equity, workers rights and immigrant justice. Almas served as General Counsel and Policy Advisor to the National Domestic Workers Alliance, leading groundworking campaigns for domestic workers’ rights and shaping the organization’s rapid growth. More recently, Almas served as Deputy Director of Programs at the California Immigrant Policy Center, steering critical campaigns to ensure healthcare access, worker protections and mitigating the impact of immigration enforcement for California’s undocumented communities. Almas began her legal career as a housing lawyer, defending tenants losing their housing due to eviction and pursuing affirmative claims against unscrupulous landlords. Before her time as a lawyer, Almas served the Senate Banking Committee, Senate Joint Economic Committee and two New York gubernatorial administrations. She has appeared on BBC America, Al Jazeera America and National Public Radio and published in the LA Times, Slate and the Yale Journal of Law and Social Policy. Almas is a graduate of UCLA School of Law, where she was a Public Interest Law and Policy Fellow. She holds an MSc from the London School of Economics, an MA from Hebrew University, where she was a Fulbright Fellow, and a Certificate of Advanced Studies from Birzeit University. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas.
	Ann Oliva Chief Executive Officer National Alliance to End Homelessness She/Her/Hers Ann Oliva is CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a public education, advocacy, and capacity building organization dedicated to ending homelessness in the United States. A career veteran of homelessness and housing policy, she is recognized as one of the foremost experts on homelessness in the nation. In her role, Ms. Oliva works closely with members of Congress and the Administration, as well as with officials and advocates at the state and local levels. As part of that role, she also collaborates closely with Alliance partners to educate the public on the real nature of homelessness and its solutions, and to advance known best practices within the homeless services sector. Ms. Oliva previously served as Vice President for Housing Policy for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and as a Senior Policy Advisor at the Corporation for Supportive Housing. Her distinguished career is also marked by a decade of federal service at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). During her 10-year tenure at HUD, Ms. Oliva successfully designed and implemented a variety of initiatives and programs, including homelessness prevention, supportive housing, and rapid re-housing programs, as well as a demonstration to end youth homelessness. In 2015, Ms. Oliva was named one of the 50 Most Influential Leaders in the department’s first 50 years, and was honored with the True Colors Fund’s True Leader Award. She was a finalist for a Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medal (Sammie) in management excellence in 2011, and was part of an inter-agency team that won a Sammie for the team’s work on reducing Veteran homelessness in 2012.
	Daniel del Pielago Housing Director Empower DC He/Him/His Daniel del Pielago was born in Peru and immigrated to the DC metro area in 1980.  For the past 15 years he has been organizing with communities of color here in the District around the issues of preserving and improving affordable housing and traditional public education.  In his role as Housing Director, Daniel hopes to support staff organizers in pushing their campaigns and the organization forward as a whole.  Daniel, is also a husband, father of two and lover of music of all types, he has collected music in the vinyl format for over 20 years.
	Peggy Bailey Vice President for Housing and Income Security Center on Budget and Policy Priorities She/Her/Hers Peggy Bailey is the Vice President for Housing and Income Security. She oversees the Center’s work to protect and expand access to affordable housing, improve states’ Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and child support programs and expand employment opportunities to housing and cash assistance recipients. Throughout her career, she has helped build connections between the housing community and health, nutrition, child welfare, and other systems of care, amid growing recognition that access to stable, affordable housing is a necessary foundation that enables people with low incomes to meet other basic needs and make progress toward achieving their hopes and dreams. Her housing policy expertise focuses on ways to expand access to rental assistance, improve and preserve public and multifamily affordable housing, advance eviction prevention and mitigation strategies, and help renters grow savings and credit histories. Bailey’s work is centered in identifying the ways racism and discrimination in housing policy have resulted in disinvestment in communities of color and created disparate outcomes for people in marginalized groups.
	Tanya Edelin Board Member if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility She/Her/Hers Tanya Edelin is Vice President of Finance and Administration at Youth Invest Partners (formerly Venture Philanthropy Partners, Inc) where she provides oversight and management of all financial and business support functions of the organization. Prior to Youth Invest Partners, Ms. Edelin was Director of Operations at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. where she led various operational initiatives including the organization’s Covid Response Plan, technology implementations, financial process improvements, and budget management of the Marshall Motley Scholars Program, a groundbreaking commitment to endow the South with the next generation of civil rights lawyers. Ms. Edelin currently serves as Vice Chair and Treasurer on the board of if A Foundation for Radical Possibility Foundation and a Trustee on the board of the Institute for Public Health Innovation (IPHI). She resides in the District of Columbia with her family.
	Temi F. Bennett Co-CEO if, A Foundation for Radical Possibility She/Her/Hers Temi co-leads if’s overall programmatic, financial, and governance strategy development and implementation. Additionally, she leads several bodies of work within if’s systems change and reparations strategies. Temi is responsible for engaging local governments in the D.C. metropolitan area as they develop and implement racially equitable and just policies that enable Black communities and other communities of color to thrive. She also chairs Resourcing Radical Justice (RRJ), a funders collective that centers Black liberation as the path to a thriving greater Washington region. Temi received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center (2009), where she served as Editor-in-Chief of the Georgetown Journal of Law & Modern Critical Race Perspectives. She graduated magna cum laude from Virginia State University with a B.A. in English (2005).

Do you like this page?

Showing 2 reactions

Jack Zhang published this page in 2023 Funders Institute Agenda 2023-06-27 16:27:41 -0400
Jack Zhang published this page in 2023 Funders Institute Agenda 2023-06-27 15:47:30 -0400

We joined Funders Together because we believe in the power of philanthropy to play a major role in ending homelessness, and we know we have much to learn from funders across the country.

-Christine Marge, Director of Housing and Financial Stability at United Way of Greater Los Angeles

I am thankful for the local partnerships here in the Pacific Northwest that we’ve been able to create and nurture thanks to the work of Funders Together. Having so many of the right players at the table makes our conversations – and all of our efforts – all the richer and more effective.

-David Wertheimer, Deputy Director at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.

-President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 State of the Union Address

Funders Together has given me a platform to engage the other funders in my community. Our local funding community has improved greatly to support housing first models and align of resources towards ending homelessness.

-Leslie Strnisha, Vice President at Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland

Our family foundation convenes local funders and key community stakeholders around strategies to end homelessness in Houston. Funders Together members have been invaluable mentors to us in this effort, traveling to our community to share their expertise and examples of best practices from around the nation.

-Nancy Frees Fountain, Managing Director at The Frees Foundation

Sign in with Facebook, Twitter or email.