This post was authored by Charley Ice, who is an active member of EPIP-Hawaii. Charley grew up in Yosemite and studied sociology and political science at Berkeley in the Vietnam era, followed by a masters in urban planning in Hawaii. He’s been in Hawaii for 40 years, and is a proponent of Hawaiian issues, environmental and social justice issues, in addition to holding interests in economics and current events. Charley chairs the Environmental Caucus of the Democratic Party, and serves as a union shop steward at his office in the Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management, where they tackle cutting edge issues in the public trust. He is also a boardmember of the Hawaii People’s Fund, a small seed-grant agency focused on social and environmental justice, whose motto is “change, not charity”.  

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Jenny Achilles is a Program Officer for Philanthropy at TG in Round Rock, Texas. She began as a graduate intern at TG in September 2012 and transitioned to full-time employment May 1, 2013. She recently joined Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy and attended training at The Grantmaking School in Grand Rapids, MI, July 29-30.  She responded to the EPIP Summer Challenge to share her experiences at The Grantmaking School.  This is her story. Read more

Katja Kurz serves on the EPIP-NY Steering committee. She is the University Relations Coordinator at Cultural Vistas, an international exchange organization organizing professional programs to foster career exploration and leadership development. In her role, Katja focuses on increasing access to international education opportunities for STEM and traditionally underrepresented students. She has previously held research and teaching positions at Columbia University in NY and Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. Katja has published on human rights advocacy and intercultural communication. She holds a doctorate in English from the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and an M.A. from Clark University in Worcester, MA.  Katja responded to the EPIP summer challenge to share how she’s embracing leadership opportunities this summer.  This is her story. Becoming Globally Competent Leaders: My Experience from a Summer Program for African American STEM Students Do we need international experience to become good leaders? The answer is YES, as a result of an innovative leadership project that I worked on this summer. The project, called STEM LAUNCH (“Learning and Understanding New Career Horizons”), was aimed at creating international opportunities for U.S. students at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) for leadership development. Read more

EPIP San Diego held a workshop on Communicating with Authenticity, learning to structure conversations to build mutual inquiry, understanding, and trust that help generate more effective collaboration and action. Participants from around the San Diego community learned how to make specific communication choices – speaking, questions, listening, silence, reflection – that build the relationships to increase organizational, community, and social change impact. Following the dynamic workshop, participants responded that they now understand the responsibilities to “think clearly about what one wants to promote, prevent” in dialogue. That we should “respect our audience, listen, inquire, be curious.” Stop, listen, reframe or inquire. Create new pathways to connect the dots. Keep in mind difference between intention and impact. Be intentional about space for inviting and giving feedback. Ask questions that inspire new ways of thinking. Inquire for the sake of furthering dialogue and responding to previous questions. Next time you’re engaging in conversation, make it meaningful and constructive by being present and leaning in. Connect, engage, and give back. Read more

EPIP’s Summer Intern, Chad Salter, recently had a conversation with Edgar Villanueva, Program Officer at Marguerite Casey Foundation and member of EPIP’s Board of Advisors about his path in philanthropy.  Following is an excerpt from their conversation. Chad Salter: How did you become interested/involved in philanthropy (what has been your career path)? Read more

Allie Yee is a fellow at the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and an EPIP member. She responded to the EPIP summer challenge asking EPIP members to share the ways they are exercising leadership this summer. This is Allie’s story.  “I don’t know anything about nonprofit financials.” That’s what I said to a program officer last summer when I started at the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation in North Carolina. After a month on the job and just three months out of undergrad, I was about to start my first grant cycle and felt completely unprepared to make judgments on which nonprofits to fund, much less assess their financial health with any sophistication. Thankfully, my first grant cycle consisted largely of shadowing program officers, so I skated by on just an introduction to the basics and an assurance to just use my common sense. Read more

I often describe EPIP gatherings as scenes that evoke images reminiscent of a United Colors of Benetton advertisement. Our members come in all hues and orientations. That is the beauty of our organization. We are extremely diverse and comfortable coming together to discuss how we can work to make the world a better place. However, talking about race isn’t a comfortable task. We all come to the conversation with different sets of experiences that frame how we see the world. We also live in communities that have long histories impacted by race, affecting how different groups interact with each other. Read more

This post originally appeared on the YNPN-Chicago Blog.  On April 5th and 6th, I had the pleasure of attending the Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP) National Conference here in Chicago.  The EPIP Executive Director, Rahsaan Harris, invited me to join as one of the Board Chairs of YNPN Chicago.  I was very excited about participating in this event because of the insights I would gain from future philanthropic leaders and the new information I could share with the YNPN member base to build our programming and partners. For those of you not familiar with EPIP, they are a similar in purpose to YNPN although their programming is specific for up and coming leadership in the philanthropic sector.  Currently, there is not a chapter in Chicago but there was an announcement that they are going to explore that option this year.  Very exciting! Here are three main take-a-ways/reflections as “The Mole” for the nonprofit sector: Read more

The following is written by Elizabeth Kidd, Steering Committee Co-Chair of the EPIP-Michigan Chapter, and staff at the Community Foundation for the Holland/Zeeland Area.  Moving up on the proverbial career ladder is a frequent topic of conversation among young professionals in any field; the philanthropic/social change sector is certainly no exception.  We analyze potential next steps, lament the often limited options for upward mobility, confess our fears that we might be stagnating, and celebrate when we ourselves or our colleagues have opportunities to move up.  However as I talked with other participants at the 2013 EPIP National Conference and listened to them describe the work they were doing, I was struck by how woefully inadequate the career ladder metaphor is to capture the many valuable ways we can and do move professionally – particularly in the field of philanthropy. Read more

The 2013 EPIP National Conference included an awards ceremony. The EPIP Unity Award, which honors the chapter that has grown the most over the past year, went to EPIP Hawai’i, recognized as a chapter at the 2012 National Conference in Los Angeles. During the awards ceremony, Kevin Chang of the EPIP Hawai’i chapter and Executive Director of the Hawai’i Community Stewardship Network, sang and played the song Hawai’i 78. The following is a series of excerpts from a letter he wrote to the EPIP staff. Mahalo nui (big thank you) for including a sense of Hawaiʻi in your conference and for the opportunity to share a song. For all you knew I was going to do my best Jerry Lewis impersonation so I appreciate the trust you had in us. Although, since Jerry Lewis was a philanthropist, too, maybe it would have gone over quite well! I wanted you to know that my EPIP Hawaiʻi Chapter friends work hard to bring people together here at home to tackle the wicked issues of our time. It was important to us to express that we are not just an island but part of a larger context and we have role to play. The phrase that makes up the song we presented –“Hawaiʻi 78 “- is for some of our community a veiled kāhea (or call) of independence, the chorus: “Ua mau ke ea o ka ʻāina i ka pono”- our state motto: “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness”- relates to […] Read more