M. Gabriela Alcalde, MPH, DrPH

About the Author

Born in Lima, Peru, Dr. Alcalde is a creative, anti-supremacist leader with experience in the philanthropic, academic, governmental, nonprofit, and grassroots sectors. She writes and speaks locally, nationally, and internationally about shifting the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, culture change, racial justice, and leadership of women of color. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Louisville, a master’s in public health from Boston University, and a doctorate in global public health from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. What Your Comfort Costs Us is her first book.

Photo credit: Stonetree Creative

About Gabriela

I am an immigrant, a mother, a woman of color, a public health professional, an unwitting leader, a pretty good cook, a mediocre rock climber, an excellent dancer when no one’s looking, and a writer.

I was born in the coastal desert city of Lima, Peru, a beautiful and complicated place. My worldview is deeply informed by my family, Peru’s culture, and Peru's socio-political context in the 1970s and 80s. Lima was home until age 10, when my family set off on a long, unsettled many years that saw us move across continents many times, intermittently returning to Lima.

We flowed, not so seamlessly, from one country to another, with different languages (although always and only Spanish at home), cultures, and across wildly different school systems and calendars. This moving around and repeatedly existing in places outside our culture, language, and experience has shaped me and how I see and engage with the world.

The extended and recurrent experience of being an outsider has granted me access to certain practices and vantage points that allow me to view multiple realities at once. The experience of being othered has made evident our essential interdependence, clarifying the urgent need for empathy and solidarity. Being raised in a way that made living in alignment with my values non-negotiable has made working for a more just world inevitable and necessary.

I’ve intentionally worked in multiple sectors to gain perspective from each and glimpse a more complete picture of how we can collectively thrive. I’ve been an elementary school teacher, a policy analyst, an academic researcher, a local government advocate, a grassroots leader, a consultant, a volunteer, a board member, and an institutional philanthropy leader. I’ve experimented, challenged, co-created, and cared for everywhere I’ve worked.

In every place and sector where I have lived and worked, I have experienced and witnessed rampant workplace abuse, organizational shortsightedness, disconnection from values and purpose, and lack of creativity or imagination. In all this, people were harmed, power was misused, and communities were poorly served.

I want to use my lived and learned experiences, education, skill set, and leadership to contribute to the growing efforts to abandon the current harmful workplace cultures so entangled in their supremacist, colonialist, and patriarchal roots and dream up new and better ways to organize ourselves to meet our collective needs. I believe that a better way is possible, a better way for all of us.

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Biography

Work Experience

Education

Selected Publications

Selected Presentations

Photo credit: Stonetree Creative

Work Experience  

Chief Executive Officer, Elmina B. Sewall Foundation (Maine)

Managing Director for Equity and Health, Richmond Memorial Health Foundation

Vice President, Policy and Program, Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky

Founding Director, Kentucky Health Justice Network

Public Health, Policy, and Community Engagement Consultant

Director, Office for Women, Louisville Metro government

Research Faculty, Institute for Bioethics, Health Policy and Law, University of Louisville School of Medicine

Health Policy Specialist, National Conference of State Legislatures

Student Counselor, Ross University School of Medicine

Elementary School Spanish teacher, Jefferson Country Public Schools

Education

DrPH, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

MPH, Boston University

BA, Psychology University of Louisville

Selected Publications

Philanthropy and Culture Change
Co-authored

·       Las Chicas Are Not Alright: Lessons for Organizational Culture Change, with M. Cristina Alcalde, Medium, April 16, 2022.

·       Two Maine Health Foundation Leaders Discuss Their Organizations’ Racial Equity Journey, Health Affairs blog, March 21, 2021, with Barbara Leonard

·       Star Trek Discovery: 10 Lessons for Imagining and Designing a Truly Different Future, with Attica Scott, Medium, July 20, 2021.

·       Transnational Considerations in Equity Work in Three Contexts: Higher Education, Philanthropy and Public Policy, Integral Leadership Review, with Cristina Alcalde and Gonzalo Alcalde, June 2019.

·       A Southern Foundation’s Journey Towards Equity, Views from the Field, Grantmakers in Health, January 29, 2019, with Mark Constantine

·       Investing in Policy and Advocacy: A Foundation Shares Lessons Learned, Health Affairs Blog, June 2017, with Maggie Jones 

Doctoral Dissertation Research

Family planning experiences and perceptions of access: Latina immigrants in a new settlement state, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ProQuest, UMI Dissertations Publishing, 2012.

Selected Presentations

  • Equitable, Meaningful, Valuable Boards—how do we get there? (with Tara Huffman, BoardSource) Grantmakers for Effective Organizations annual conference, Los Angeles, CA, May 20, 2024.

  • Trust-based Philanthropy and Racial Equity, Trust-based Philanthropy Project series on TBP and Racial Equity, (with Michelle Morales), March 21, 2024.

  •  Freedom Dreams in Philanthropy: A conversation about heartbreak and hope in philanthropy. September 2023.  

  • “The Elephant in the Room: Funder listening for the collective good,” Feedback Labs annual summit, funder plenary, Atlanta, GA. February 9, 2023.

  • Maine Development Foundation, Annual Meeting, “Strength In Community,” keynote. September 23, 2022.

  • Strategies for Shifting Power from Funder-Driven to Community-Driven, with Lauress Lawrence, Fowsia Musse, and Lisa Sockabasin. Tamarack Institute, August 24, 2022.

  • Invited speaker on racial equity and trust-based philanthropy, Pivotal Ventures, May 3, 2022.

  • “Confronting Historical Power Imbalances in Philanthropy” 2022 Northeast Trust-based Philanthropy Cohort Session. A Trust-based Philanthropy Project, Philanthropy Network, Philanthropy New York collaboration. April 7, 2022.

  • “Centering Equity and Power-sharing in Philanthropic Practices, Culture, Structures, and Leadership”, Trust-based Philanthropy in 4D Webinar Series. Trust-based Philanthropy Project and BlueSky Funders. March 31, 2022.

  • “The Power of Relationships to Build Equity and Change Systems,” Council of Foundations Leading Together conference, June 16, 2021. (with Shima Kabirigi, Lauress Laurence and Barbara Leonard)

  • “Trust-based Philanthropy Project: The Values, Culture, and Practices of Trust-based Philanthropy,” 2021 Philanthropy Partners Conference, Maine Philanthropy Center, May 18, 2021. (with Ian Yaffe and Shaady Salehi)

  • “Ethos of TBP: Reimagining Funder Roles,” Trust-based Philanthropy Project webinar series Ethos of TBP, April 27, 2021.

  • “Building a Trust-based Culture Among Staff and Board,” Blue Sky Funders Trust-based philanthropy webinar series, April 21, 2021.

  • Panelist, A Conversation with Edgar Villanueva and The 2019 Funders Forum, Maine Philanthropy Center, September 26, 2019.

  • Equity in Philanthropy, speaker for the Terrance Keenan Institute reunion, Grantmakers in Health annual conference, Chicago, Illinois, June 20, 2018.

  • “A Southern Foundation’s Equity Journey,” Health Equity Funder Network Breakfast, Grantmakers in Health annual conference, Chicago, Illinois, June 21, 2018.

  • “Philanthropy’s Equity Imperative,” 2017 Southeastern Council of Foundations, Orlando, Florida, November 15, 2017.

  • “Equity in Rural Kentucky,” panel presentation at the Sharing Knowledge to Build a Culture of Health conference, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Louisville, Kentucky, February 2017. 

  • “The ACA and Philanthropy: Strategies to Support Implementation,” 2014 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting and Exposition, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 17, 2014.

  • “Latina Immigrants’ Perceptions of Access to Family Planning in a New Settlement state,” 141st American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting and Exposition, Boston, Massachusetts, November 6, 2013.

  • “Health Equity in the Affordable Care Act,” Kentuckiana Black Nurses Association training, Louisville, Kentucky, September 25, 2012.

  • “Reproductive Justice as a Public Health Tool to Improve the Reproductive Health of Latina Immigrants”, 138th American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting and Exposition, Denver, Colorado, November 8, 2010.

  • “Reproductive Justice: Deepening Our Understanding of the Interplay of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Reproductive Health,” 11th Ending Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Annual Conference, Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs and Kentucky Domestic Violence Association, Lexington, Kentucky, December 2, 2009.

  • “Reproductive Health and Domestic Violence: The Issue of Pregnancy in Intimate Partner Violence,” Kentucky Domestic Violence Association Training Institute (4-hour workshop), Frankfort, Kentucky, June 18 and August 28, 2009.

  • “Intimate Partner Violence and Maternal Mortality,” Issues in Maternal Mortality in Kentucky, Kentucky Section American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Kentucky Medical Association, April 28, 2006.

  • “The Changing Face of Kentucky,” Kentucky Public Health Association Annual Conference, Louisville, Kentucky, April 20, 2005.

  • “Child Fatality Review:  Current Status of Legal Mandates,” poster presentation, ATPM Annual Conference: Teaching Prevention, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 28, 2003.

  • “Child Fatality Review in the United States,” with Nanette Elster, Sixth World Conference on Injury Prevention and Control, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 15, 2002.

  • “Public Health and Clinical Trials: Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities,” Bioethics, Minorities and the Law: Rights and Remedies, an American Bar Association and Tuskegee University National Center for Bioethics in Research and Health Care Conference, Tuskegee, AL, April 5, 2002.

  • “Disparities in Reproductive Health:  Impact on racial and ethnic minorities”, with Nanette Elster, National Forum for Black Public Administrators, Louisville, KY, November 9, 2001.