Six Questions for Alesha Washington, Seattle Foundation’s New President and CEO
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Alesha Washington. Photo credit: Nakean Wickliff
On March 30, the Seattle Foundation, the oldest community foundation serving the Pacific Northwest, welcomed Alesha Washington as its new president and CEO after a nationwide search.
Born and raised in Cleveland, Washington received her undergraduate degree from Oberlin College and a master’s degree in nonprofit management from Case Western Reserve University. Before joining Seattle Foundation, Washington was the program director for Vibrant Neighborhoods and Inclusive Economy at the George Gund Foundation. The work, Washington told me, “brought together public policy and philanthropy, which is my passion.”
She has also served as vice president of government advocacy at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, one of the largest chambers of commerce in the country, and held senior government relations roles with Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and the Centers for Families and Children.
Washington learned about the opportunity at Seattle Foundation through a friend and a recruiter. As she took a closer look at the role, she says, “I was really encouraged by the foundation’s recognition and prioritization of racial equity and justice. Having had a series of conversations with the board and with the search committee about the opportunity, I felt good to say yes, and I was happy that they felt good to say yes to me.”
I recently caught up with Washington to discuss her new role, the risks of returning to the pre-2020 status quo, and the benefits of moving to the Pacific Northwest in the spring. Here are some excerpts from that discussion, which have been edited for clarity.
Most of the nonprofit leaders I’ve spoken with told me they didn’t intentionally plan on ending up in the sector. But you received your master’s degree in nonprofit management, so it was obviously a very conscious decision for you.
It was. From a young age, I was aware of the role of nonprofits and the opportunities they provided. For example, I attended an early learning center that meant the world to me and my mom. I would go back after I got older to visit my teachers and the folks that ran that center.
I started my first role at the Centers for Families and Children as a government grant writer and then as a government affairs manager. As it turned out, the center was the parent organization that operated that early learning center that I went to as a child. So there’s always been these serendipitous moments in my life where something was instilled in me through an organization, and I found a way to give back.
Who are your biggest influences?
The biggest one would be my mother because she instilled such a strong sense of care and love and the ability to dream big. She made sure that I didn’t feel stifled by my surroundings, that whatever that audacious goal was, if I did my due diligence and put in the work, I can make it happen.
The other is the former executive director of the George Gund Foundation, David Abbott. He retired just about a year ago. I’ve known him since my early 20s, and for every career move that I’ve made, he’s one of the first people I call to determine if I should make a decision, including the opportunity to come to the Seattle Foundation. What he’s always impressed upon me is that in philanthropy, this work can be as hard as we make it. It should be hard because we are trying to be a partner in solving some wickedly complex problems in our world, but we have the ability to do the hard stuff, and we should always approach it that way.
Speaking of wickedly complex problems, with things seemingly returning to “normal,” many individuals whom I’ve spoken with are concerned that philanthropy, consciously or otherwise, will revert back to the pre-2020 status quo. Are you sensing this tension?
While we’ve made a lot of progress, I do feel the sense of folks pushing back, saying, “Why do we still care about that? Things are fine.” And so to your point, I think philanthropy has to have the courage to stay the course.
This is an important moment in time, given the influx of federal resources into cities. We need to think about what an equitable rebuilding looks like and philanthropy’s role in that process, which means we can’t shy away from the value statements that we’ve espoused around the importance of an equitable and just society. We have to keep the momentum going.
What’s the best piece of advice that you’ve ever received?
It was something I recently heard from one of my staff at Seattle Foundation. In asking her for guidance on how I can be successful in the role, she said, “continue to show up exactly as you are, because it gives me permission to do the same.” That was a really grounding moment for me to remember that with all the identities that I bring to this work, not to hide myself, and to be authentic because of what it can do for other people.
I can see how that resonates, given the inherent power dynamic that can exist between leaders and their staff.
And I think it depends on who’s in the role, right? I’m in a very interesting predicament, being a Black woman in a position of privilege. How do I bring my lived experience, but also my position of power, to have influence and do good work at the end of the day? Folks of color have not had as much access to philanthropic resources, so what I wrestle with in terms of power structures and dynamics is finding common ground so we can engage in an honest conversation.
I’ve been intentional about that work, particularly during my time at the Gund Foundation. It wasn’t always easy, but I was able to have a different level of conversation with organizations about what they needed and not have them hide things because of fear of losing funding. That should never be our frame as grantmakers. We have to understand the good, the bad, and the ugly to know how we can support organizations doing important work on the ground.
I think the other side of the power dynamic that I face, and will always face, is when I’m dealing with folks — and I’ll just be honest, particularly white folks who hold power or may hold more power than me — who may not understand why I’m focused on racial equity or making certain decisions. Being able to navigate that while finding common ground with folks in communities that we’re trying to support is always an interesting tension that I hold, and that a lot of folks of color who are doing this work hold.
What excites you most about your new role?
What I’m really excited about is getting to know my team. An easy thing to forget in the midst of everything that’s going on with philanthropy right now is that there are people that make these institutions run, from the front desk specialists all the way up to the folks on my senior team.
The staff has gone through a lot, just in terms of the pressure to respond to so much community need these past few years, while folks themselves are trying to navigate what it meant for their own lives and their families. So it’s been exciting to learn, after meeting with all 53 staff, that what drives them every day is their relationships with each other and the impact that they see the foundation having in this community.
The other thing I’m excited about is learning from other folks across community foundations. This is an important moment where we’re all rethinking what it means to be a community foundation. The idea of being a “philanthropic bank” that donors use as a conduit to move resources for their own interests is evolving into a place where we need to think deeply about what our communities need and how we help donors be partners in that work.
And as an added benefit, you started about four months ago, so you’ve been able to enjoy an amazing Seattle summer.
I know. It’s just a beautiful place. I’m grateful I moved now versus October [laughs].
What’s the last great book you read?
It’s a collection of short science fiction stories called “What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky” by Lesley Nneka Arimah. Arimah is an African author who, in the spirit of Octavia Butler, tells really wonderful stories about the position of Black folks in the frame of Afrofuturism. That’s been a topic that I’ve really been intrigued by as of late in the context of my work, so I keep coming back to this book.
Any parting thoughts?
When I think about the work that philanthropy can invest in to support racial equity and justice, there’s one side of it that is about how we invest. But it’s also important to ensure that we are thinking about community organizing, public policy, advocacy work, voter engagement and civic engagement — all these things are important to movement building.
The other important thing is that we continue to be intentional about how we show up. It is one thing to espouse values around equity and justice, but I want to always hold that true when we show up in our everyday conversations with grantees. Are we talking to them with care or are we exacerbating power dynamics? We need to ensure that what we do lines up with the values that we’re espousing, because those are the things that grantees remember more than any strategic framework or press release that we put out into the world.
