Life at the Foundation
Our Team and Culture
Our foundation is composed of staff that reflect a cross-section of rich and diverse voices formed from their deep and varied backgrounds. We stand on our core values of Commitment, Integrity, Continuous Learning, and Collaboration, and their corresponding practices and behaviors, in partnership with communities to co-create an equitable society for all children and families, particularly people of color who have been marginalized systemically. With the intent of creating the best conditions possible for our work we actively strive for a culture that is welcoming, centers equity, fosters trust, embraces change, values feedback and promotes psychological safety.
Guiding Principles: What We Believe In and How We Live Out Our Work
- Dignity and respect — Through our commitment to fair and equitable treatment of all people, rooted in empathy, compassion and integrity.
- Awareness and acceptance — Through our commitment to continuous learning, by being open to learning and understanding differences in identity, needs and perspectives.
- Transparency and accountability — To strengthen relationships and come together around a shared purpose driven by collaborative engagement.
- Collective action — To build bridges and connections through power-sharing to drive impact that no one can achieve alone.
The foundation’s commitment to the ongoing building of a healthy organizational culture — with an explicit commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and actively becoming an anti-racist organization — starts from within. The culture that we co-create extends externally to all stakeholders. We are committed to a workplace free of discrimination and any form of harassment as an equal opportunity employer. We have established clear expectations for how we define and build the culture. Our cultural expectations align with our core values and guiding principles; they support and enable our strategy to achieve the outcomes we seek.
How — and Why — We Hold One Another Accountable
When all members of an organization embrace its culture-building responsibilities, a healthy, well-aligned, effective culture leads to improvements in organizational performance and results. The systems of accountability we have and create as members of the philanthropic community strengthen trust and enables solutioning for our partner communities. We must understand and lean into accountability as a guiding consideration for every action we take and every decision we make.
Our work is interdependent, and everyone must work together in a deliberate and coordinated way to cultivate our collective transformation. In order to live out our core values fully and achieve the outcomes we seek for children and families; we must hold ourselves and each other accountable in our commitments to our work. Regardless of our specific role, function or job level, the ways in which we work individually and together are distinctly connected to the level of impact we can deliver in the community. Being accountable enables us to do even more and is an integral part of us being an effective contributor towards systems-level change.
Our Locations
The foundation maintains an office in Bethesda, Maryland, but our technology and responsive organizational culture allow employees to work effectively wherever they are ― in the greater Washington, D.C., area and beyond.