Arts and Culture for Social and Racial Justice

Autumn McDonald is the Vice President of Community Investments & Partnerships, leading EBCF’s strategic grantmaking, regional collaborations, and team of program staff to deliver on our mission across the East Bay. 

Autumn has more than two decades of experience working with foundations, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies at the intersection of strategy, advocacy, civic innovation, and social impact. Through her work with FSG, a social impact consulting firm, Autumn built expertise in providing strategic guidance to large, small, community, and family foundations. Autumn also served the late San Francisco Mayor, Ed Lee, shaping policies and public-private initiatives to improve economic opportunity for Bay Area families. Before joining EBCF, she was a member of the leadership team at New America where she served as a senior fellow and head of New America CA. 

At New America, Autumn’s work focused on issues of economic equity, community engagement, resident voice, policy influence, and narrative change. Her writing has been published by numerous media outlets, including Slate, The Washington Post, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Project Syndicate, Pacific Standard and CalMatters. She also serves on the board of KQED, Lincoln Families, and Women’s Foundation of California.

Autumn has a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, a master’s from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a master’s from the Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy. She, her husband, and their three children live in Oakland. Her parents moved to Oakland from the east coast right before the pandemic, happily making her East Bay kin now intergenerational!   

Debrah Giles is a philanthropic and non-profit management professional that serves as a Program Director for the East Bay Community Foundation in Oakland, CA. She specializes in supporting initiatives within EBCF that foster education, youth development, and arts and culture.  In her role, she leads the foundation’s program strategy and grantmaking focused on arts and culture for social and racial justice, serves as the Senior Program Officer for the Clorox Company Foundation’s Responsive Grantmaking Program, and continues to lead the work that focuses on boys & men of color.

Before joining the East Bay Community Foundation, for nearly 15 years, Debrah worked for Sun Microsystems in their Global Community Development Group (Foundation). At Sun Microsystems, she managed all aspects of their national and regional grant-making programs and develop strategies to improve their grant-making procedures. During her tenure with Sun, she also developed and guided major funding programs, including their international disaster relief program, multi-year educational grants, and global gift matching programs.

Debrah received her bachelor’s degree in Business Management from St. Mary’s College. She is a native of Oakland.