Impact
Tides Profiles: Meet Leaders Driving Bold Change
Throughout the year, Tides is proud to spotlight partners who carry out the values we champion while they help create our vision of shared prosperity and social justice. While it takes a community—and sometimes the world—to make change happen, these inspiring individuals are on the frontlines, building momentum and helping to accelerate the pace. Meet just a few of the leaders Tides talked to this year.
Bridgette Murray
Founder, Achieving Community Tasks Successfully (ACTS)
“The disparities existed before COVID and will still be there after unless action is taken to improve the quality of life for all citizens.”
Believing that more data was needed to empower and protect her community, Bridgette Murray, a retired nurse and resident of Pleasantville, Texas, founded Achieving Community Tasks Successfully (ACTS) in 2012. The Houston-based nonprofit is a grantee of the Women’s Environmental Leadership Fund, (WE LEAD), a Tides Foundation funding initiative that launched in 2020. It has an explicit focus on addressing historic inequities by directing resources to Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color (BIWOC) leaders and BIWOC-led climate justice organizations. Learn more about Bridgette Murray and her fight against environmental racism.
Doug Gary
Departing Co-Founder & Co-Director of DISH
“We need to see each other fully and integrate our stories into our individual and collective healing.”
Tides talked to Doug Gary, a long-time partner and friend of Tides, as he was planning his departure from DISH (Delivering Innovation in Supportive Housing) 15 years after co-founding the organization. DISH is a fiscally sponsored project at Tides Center and a critical fixture in our San Francisco community, housing and supporting over 500 formerly homeless individuals in a city with a huge housing crisis. Read more about DISH’s legacy and future.
Chelsea Andrews
Executive Director, EveryOne Home
“I think about the love and inspiration that my parents instilled in me which encouraged me to be a servant leader.”
Executive Director Chelsea Andrews of EveryOne Home is leading the charge with her talented team in the fight to end homelessness in Alameda County. We spoke with Chelsea about EveryOne Home’s unique and complex approach—bringing together myriad nonprofit providers, the county and cities, and individuals with lived experience to center the voices of those directly affected by homelessness. EveryOne Home’s recently completed report, Centering Racial Equity in Homeless System Design, is a critical tool to help us end homelessness in Alameda County, the Bay Area, and across the country. Read more with Chelsea Andrews.
Gabriel Foster
Co-founder and Executive Director, Trans Justice Funding Project (TJFP)
“We come from communities and cultures that have had to be relentlessly creative in how we protect and care for each other.”
Founded in 2012, Trans Justice Funding Project is a BIPOC-led, community-driven funding initiative to support grassroots trans justice groups run by and for trans people in the United States, including U.S. territories. In 2021, TJFP will award $1.3 million to 308 trans-led grassroots groups (to be granted from either the TJFP’s collective action fund at Tides Foundation or its non-charitable trust). Tides spoke with Gabriel Foster about TJFP’s groundbreaking funding model and the significance of BIPOC trans leadership. Read the Q&A.
Join Our Community
Meet more bold, inspiring leaders in the Tides community who are solving today’s big challenges and stay in touch with the latest news in impact investing, philanthropy, fiscal sponsorship, and corporate social impact. Sign up in the footer below to receive our Daring Change newsletter.
Learn more about the organizations featured in this blog and see how you can get involved:
Achieving Community Tasks Successfully (ACTS)
