Esperanza Pallana, Executive Director of the Food and Farm Communications Fund, recently joined Gwen Wurst, a Senior Philanthropic Advisor at Greater Horizons for an insightful conversation on the power of participatory grantmaking and how the Fund is transforming our food systems. Relying on a donor-advised fund for administrative structure and support, the Food and Farm Communications Fund is able to focus on their mission and their grantmaking initiatives.
Esperanza was raised in California where she spent her childhood in the Bay Area, the Central Valley and the Tuolumne mountains. She is an Indigenous descendant of the Caxcan of the Nahua Nation of Northern Mexico and Southwest U.S. She is a strategic leader whose passions are community led economic development, equitable and sustainable food systems and racial justice. She has worked with nonprofits for over 20 years with an emphasis in leadership, systemic change, and policy advocacy. Her work has supported social justice entrepreneurs and movement leaders in removing policy barriers, consolidating resources and accessing grant and lending capital for their nonprofits and small businesses. As Executive Director of Food & Farm Communications Fund, a movement-led participatory grantmaker, Esperanza is committed to community-controlled capital structures, narrative shift and emboldening transformative food and agricultural systems change.