Building an Inclusive Culture of Philanthropy in Chicago
About Niketa Brar:
Niketa Brar serves as the founding executive director of Chicago United for Equity. She comes to this work from a career working to bring a community-centered approach to government, starting during her time advising a city councilmember in Oakland, California. She has served as a consultant and policy adviser to elected leaders ranging from school board to municipal and state leadership roles.
Niketa began her career in direct service, spending five years as an investigator with the DC Public Defender’s Office and later as a teacher and dean in Title I schools. She currently serves on the Local School Council at National Teachers Academy, a Level 1+ school serving a majority Black, majority low-income student population. She co-founded CUE with LSC President Elisabeth Greer as they worked together to organize parents, students, and a larger citywide coalition to fight this school closing.
Niketa holds a Bachelor of Arts in Public Policy and International Affairs from the George Washington University, a Masters of Arts in Teaching Secondary Mathematics from American University, and a Masters in Public Policy from the Ford School at the University of Michigan. She is the proud partner of a Chicago Public Schools teacher and mom to a future CPS student.
About Angelique Power:
As President of the Field Foundation, Angelique Power catalyzed changes within the Field Foundation grant structure. Nonprofit feedback, foundation peer input, racial justice training, heat maps of Chicago; all of these pieces helped reveal a path forward to a new grant model centered around Community Empowerment through Justice, Art, Media & Storytelling and Leadership Investment. This model opens the door to funding for neighborhoods that are too commonly disinvested in and aims at addressing root causes of issues in order to allow every Chicagoan to thrive in this city we love.
Power chairs the boards of 6018North and Enrich Chicago, an organization she co-founded, dedicated to racial equity in the arts. She also serves on the Board of Forefront Illinois and the national organization, Grantmakers in the Arts.
About Kashif Shaikh:
Kashif Shaikh is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Pillars Fund. In 2010, Kashif and a group of American Muslim philanthropists acted on an idea to build and create influence around the issues that matter most to American Muslims: They created a way to begin strategically harnessing our financial resources to support the incredible wave of talent in the civic sector. Under Kashif’s leadership, what started off as a volunteer-run fund blossomed into a nationally recognized and fully staffed foundation that has invested more than $4 million in nonprofits working in and alongside American Muslim communities.
While launching Pillars, Kashif was a Program Officer at the Robert R. McCormick Foundation in Chicago, where he managed a portfolio of over $5 million and helped scale a variety of Chicago nonprofits working at the intersection of racial justice, poverty, and education. His innovative portfolio invested in some of the country’s leading nonprofits. Kashif also managed the Foundation’s corporate partnerships and helped develop corporate social responsibility strategies for the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Blackhawks, and the Chicago Bulls.
Kashif’s career began at the United Way of Metropolitan Chicago, where he developed strategies to engage the organization’s largest corporate partners. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Peabody Awards, 826CHI and the Chicago Theo- logical Seminary. In 2017, he was named one of Crain’s Chicago ‘40 Under 40’ and his work at Pillars has been featured by The New York Times, BuzzFeed, and Fast Company, among others.
Moderated By: Liz Thompson
Elizabeth (Liz) M. Thompson is President of the Cleveland Avenue Foundation for Education (The CAFE). Liz began working with non-profits in 1993 as founding Executive Director of City Year Chicago, a national service organization that was the template for the AmeriCorps Program. In 1995, Liz served as Executive Director of a Montessori school in Denver, where she led a multi-million-dollar expansion of the Early Head Start program. In 1998, she became active with non-profit boards in the San Diego area, which further fueled her interest in philanthropy and education.
Prior to her work with non-profits, Liz had a ten-year career with Ameritech Corporation. Liz is a Director and Secretary for Chicago Public Media/WBEZ and a National Director for Braven and Chair of Braven’s Chicago Board. She serves as Vice Chair of the Partnership for College Completion, co-chair of Purdue University Minority Engineering Program Advisory Panel and Special Advisor to OneGoal. She is an alumnus of the Non-Profit Leadership Program of Denver and of Leadership Greater Chicago, where she served on the Board for 10 years. Liz is a past Trustee of the University of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
Most recently, Liz joined a distinguished cohort of Aspen Institute Global Leaders as a 2019 Pahara Education Fellow. She received the Outstanding Community Leader Award from The Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Dream Builders Award from the Chicago Child Care Society, and was featured in Make It Better Magazine as one of Chicago’s Top Black Women of Impact.