Multicultural Fellowship Program

In an area with such a wealth of young talent, it is essential to cultivate the next generation of community leaders to reflect the diversity of our region. In our Multicultural Fellowship Program, we select young professionals of color with the promise and passion to create significant social change. By working in teams across the Foundation, fellows gain dynamic hands-on leadership experience to prepare them for future positions in the nonprofit, philanthropic, and public sectors.

The San Francisco Foundation's Multicultural Fellowship Program aims to increase diversity in the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors. The Program provides young professionals of color with challenging work experiences and leadership opportunities in the areas of grantmaking and community building. The Fellowship includes an intensive curriculum and dynamic hands-on professional experience.

2008 Fellowship Recruitment

The San Francisco Foundation recruits three fellows per year beginning in January. The next fellowship recruitment will begin January 2009 in the areas of Community Health, Community Development, and Environment. Please check our website at that time for more information on how to apply. Please contact fellowship@sff.org with questions.

Our 2008 class of Multicultural Fellows are:

Tiffany Price is the program fellow for Education. Tiffany most recently served as an education researcher for SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research institute where she has six years of experience in education policy research and evaluation. This includes experience with qualitative and quantitative research methods and contributions to multiple national and local research and evaluation projects. At SRI, Tiffany focused her work on small school reform, charter school reform, teacher learning and development, and other issues relating to K-12 education. Prior to her work at SRI, Tiffany was a Fulbright Fellow in Japan where she conducted research on the presentation of the West in Japanese history textbooks. Tiffany holds a Master's degree in International Comparative Education from Stanford University, as well as a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry and International Studies from Emory University.

The Fellowship taught me the dynamics within a region or community that have been really helpful when thinking about how you can make change at a national or state policy level.

            -Recent Fellow

Dennis Quirin is the program fellow for Social Justice. Dennis has spent a number of years in the nonprofit sector working on issues of social, racial, and economic justice. He most recently served as development director for Californians for Justice, a statewide community-based organization working with youth and parents for social and racial justice. Previously, Dennis worked as a community organizer and researcher for a number of electoral campaigns and community-based organizations including the "Yes on Prop 52" campaign, Action for Grassroots Empowerment and Neighborhood Development Alternatives (AGENDA), Community Institute for Policy, Heuristics, Education, and Research (CIPHER), AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and Public Allies Los Angeles. Dennis holds a Bachelor's degree in Studio Art from Carleton College.

Jaime Cortez is the program fellow for Arts and Culture. Jaime's extensive experience includes his work in AIDS prevention, education, and arts management. He worked for five years as the program manager of Galeria de la Raza, a multidisciplinary community-based arts organization in San Francisco. Jaime has had over a dozen of his stories included in anthologies, and he has edited many HIV prevention publications, often working at the intersection of public health and art. His graphic novella "Sexile," about a transgender HIV activist from Cuba, was nominated for an American Library Association Award, and the HIV prevention comic anthology "Turnover," which he edited, was a finalist for the Independent Publishers award. Jaime has exhibited his art at venues across the Bay Area including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Oakland Museum of California, The Lab, and other alternative art spaces. Jaime holds a Bachelor's degree in Communications from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master's degree of Fine Arts from the University of California at Berkeley.

Gloria Bruce is the program fellow for Community Development. Most recently, Gloria served as Senior Program Associate at the Berkeley Alliance, a partnership between the City of Berkeley, UC-Berkeley, and the Berkeley Unified School District, where she convened meetings of community and city leaders, streamlined organizational operations, and coordinated a volunteer program serving homeless and low-income youth. Gloria brings a range of non-profit experience in the housing, education, and environmental fields as a teacher and policy researcher in Washington, D.C., the Boston area, and China. In the Bay Area, she has worked with Urban Habitat, Affordable Housing Associates, the City of Richmond, the National Park Service, and East Bay Housing Organizations, focusing primarily on equitable development and affordable housing. Gloria received her Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor of Arts in history from Harvard University.

Grace Ma is the program fellow for Environment. Grace most recently served as the coordinator for urban forestry policy, planning and management in San Francisco with the Department of the Environment. She developed a city urban forest plan, tree pruning standards, landmark tree program, and educational materials. As a graduate student she worked with Local Enhancement and Appreciation of Forests (LEAF) on backyard trees and developed a public campaign to protect trees within the City of Toronto. She previously worked on pesticide databases, publications, and partner organization relations at Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). Grace holds a Master's degree in forest conservation from the University of Toronto and a Bachelor's degree in conservation resource studies from University of California Berkeley.

Josaphine Stevenson is the program fellow for Community Health. As a researcher Josaphine most recently examined oral health disparities, with a focus on Latino children’s access to oral health care, while working for the University of California at San Francisco. Prior to this, she worked on research projects that focused on access to nutrition in low-income communities, senior access to health care, the lack of ethnic diversity in University of California medical schools and Native American legal rights. Organizations that Josaphine has worked with include the Prevention Research Center, Greenlining Institute, Native American Legal Rights Foundation and Partners in Care. Previously a co-owner of the Cheese Board Collective in Berkeley, Josaphine co-led the development of a sister cooperative in San Francisco from idea to profitable business. Josaphine received her B.A. in Anthropology and Native American Studies from the University of California at Davis and is a candidate for her Master’s Degree in Applied Medical Anthropology from California State University, Long Beach.