Community & Partner Call: Shift Power to Your Community

Independent Consultant

Katy Love is an experienced practitioner of participatory philanthropy and independent consultant and is the co-developer of the Advancing Participation in Philanthropy Tool. She has 20 years of experience in philanthropy and has worked with foundations in director and program officer roles, and now helps funders to align their practices and operations with their values. Katy has served as a leader, facilitator or member of more than 50 participatory grantmaking processes in regional, national and global participatory funds. She has extensively spoken, written, and trained others on community participation in philanthropy. With Fund for Shared Insight, Katy co-led a several year participatory climate initiative and co-created the Participatory Philanthropy Toolkit. Previously, she was the director of grantmaking at the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that operates Wikipedia, and prior to that, she served at the Global Fund for Children.

Director of Strategic Advancement, Center for Public Representation

Diana Samarasan is the co-author with Katy Love of the Advancing Participation in Philanthropy Tool, supporting foundations to self-assess participatory and inclusive practices. Diana was one of the pioneers to include people with lived experience in decision-making about global grantmaking strategy and funding, along the lines of the disability movement slogan, “nothing about us without us.” From 2007-2022, she was founding Executive Director of participatory grantmakers, the Disability Rights Fund (DRF) and the Disability Rights Advocacy Fund (DRAF), which are collaborations between donors and global disability activists to support the growth and diversification of intersectional disability rights movements across the Global South. Her work has been featured in numerous philanthropic publications, including the book, Letting Go: How Philanthropists and Impact Investors Can Do More Good By Giving Up Control and Candid’s Guide, Deciding Together: Shifting Power and Resources Through Participatory Grantmaking; as well as in feminist spaces, such as AWID: One in Every Fifth Sister – At the Door.

Diana currently works for the Center for Public Representation, building on her role within organizations addressing abuses against persons with disabilities, including through advocacy and litigation. A mid-career graduate of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Diana has advanced degrees in Public Administration and Feminist Psychology. Diana has served on numerous Boards and steering groups, including the Human Rights Funders Network, the United States International Council on Disability, and research boards of projects collecting global disability data at UCLA and Fordham Universities. She is currently on the boards of the Center for Inclusive Policy, the Climate Justice Resilience Fund, Validity Foundation, the Kansas Delaware Tribal Council, and the Harvard Alumni Disability Alliance.