Samuel S. Fels Fund

 

Uma Viswanathan, President

Uma Viswanathan is a philanthropic and social change leader with two decades of experience advancing racial equity, civic engagement, and community-rooted leadership across the country. A Philadelphia resident, she brings national perspective and deep relationships to strengthening the city’s grassroots movement leadership.

Across her philanthropic career, Uma has invested in ways that honor local and culturally rooted leadership, expand civic and community engagement, and deepen how philanthropy understands and invests in racial equity and healing, health and wellbeing, and systems change.

She was the first Executive Director of New Pluralists, a national funder collaborative fostering a culture of pluralism in American life. Under her leadership, the collaborative raised and invested $40 million to support a growing pluralism ecosystem – including community and institutional leaders, culture-makers and storytellers, scholars and civic innovators. She launched Healing Starts Here, a $10 million initiative focused on community-led pluralism, and helped bring overlooked and marginalized leaders into national conversations, including at the White House’s United We Stand Summit.

Uma served as a Program Officer at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, where she shaped foundation-wide strategies and investment portfolios in leadership, community and civic engagement and racial equity. As a Senior Program Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she invested in and advanced movement-aligned, systems-transforming, and culturally grounded leadership to advance health equity – including spearheading a transformational leadership collective to tackle inequities in health and healthcare systems, rooted in design thinking.

Prior to entering philanthropy, Uma directed the Boards and Commissions Leadership Institute at Urban Habitat in the Bay Area, developing a pipeline of social justice and civil rights organizers working across issues and communities to join local and regional boards and commissions. She founded and led Nouvelle Vie Haiti, a youth-led initiative that trained 350 Haitian leaders in trauma relief, food sovereignty, and sexual health. Together, these young leaders have reached over 10,000 Haitians with healing and community development programs. A longtime meditation and breathwork practitioner with the Art of Living, Uma integrates healing, resilience, and wellbeing into how she supports leadership at every level.

Uma holds an unwavering belief in people’s capacity to stand up for one another, to wrestle with hard truths without falling apart, and to build a future beyond this moment – one where we don’t just survive, but thrive together in the face of profound challenges.

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