About Grace

Several aspects of Grace’s career led to her being uniquely positioned to found and cultivate The Lupine Collaborative. As a queer Black woman has pushed her to question and reimagine a world where she and her communities are celebrated and trusted to lead, dream, and build. Secondly, she’s been bolstered by a brilliant community of people who have, and continue to, support her to take risks and challenge her to dream bigger.

Grace has advised environmental nonprofit and foundations on their grantmaking practices. Her projects included the Doris Duke Foundation’s Building an Inclusive Conservation Movement Program and Diversifying the Conservation Field, project to expand and revise the foundation’s grantmaking focus. She advised the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The David and Lucile Packard Foundation on their $10 million investment in the development, empowerment, and growth of emerging and active environmental justice leaders from throughout California now know as Environmental Leadership Initiative Fellows. She supported The National Wildlife Federation’s Women in Conservation in sunsetting their program, helped shaped The North Face’s Explorer Fund, and successfully led the search for Patagonia’s inaugural Environmental Justice Program Officer. Other clients included Network for Energy, Water and Health in Affordable Buildings, Next 100 Coalition, Earth Island Institute, and Meridian Institute to develop and implement programming for communities of color. 

Prior to consulting, Grace co-led People of the Global Majority in the Outdoors, Nature, and Environment, the largest gathering of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color in the environmental sector. As the director of Operations & Strategic Partnerships, Grace designed operational and partnership practices to transition PGM ONE from a volunteer organization to a fiscally sponsored non-profit that employed two co-directors and a leadership circle of 20.  She created multiple funds including the Black Joy Fund, raising and rapidly distributing $30,000 in the summer of 2020, and the Queer and Trans People of Color Fund.

In 2021, Grace was awarded an 18-month fellowship by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Pisces Foundation. The funding freed up her time and brain space to design the framework for what is now The Lupine Collaborative. In 2024, she became a fellow at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to further their Shifting Systems Initiatives and Climate Philanthropy with thought partnership, organizing, and writing.

Grace served on the boards of GirlVentures, Cycles of Change, and The Institute for Parks, People, and Biodiversity at the University of California at Berkeley. She was featured by The National Wildlife Federation, The Headlands Institute, Save The Redwoods League, and Bicycling Magazine, amongst others. 

She is an alum of the Storyknife Writers Retreat, Philoxenia Black Writers Retreat, and Rockland Residency’s Inaugural Black Artist Cohort, and Seeds of Solidarity: A Retreat for Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color Climate Writers.

She is currently enrolled in a MFA in Creative Writing at The New School in New York City.

In addition to world-bending, Grace is delighted by food, books, bicycles, and trying to travel everywhere with one bag.

Learn more about Grace here.