Lead Consultant and Coach: Marian Urquilla
StrategyLift is Marian Urquilla’s coaching and consulting practice. As a coach, she works primarily with leaders of color to advance large-scale system change and build liberatory organizations and networks. In her consultant role, Marian works with social sector institutions, such as Greenlining, the Kresge Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and Strive Together, to strengthen their racial equity and system change strategies. She has helped launch large-scale philanthropic initiatives in diverse program areas, including climate resilience and community health, and she has designed national leadership programs focused on diversifying non-profit sector talent pipelines, deepening food security, and strengthening educational partnerships.
Along with Robin Hacke, Marian is the co-founder of the Center for Community Investment (CCI). At CCI, she helps lead Field Catalyst and the Fulcrum Fellowship, two national programs designed to support the work of social and public sector leaders working to advance racial and economic justice through community investment. She also serves as a member of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Results Count leadership development faculty.
From 2008 to 2012, Marian served as Director of Program Strategies at Living Cities, where she helped lead the Integration Initiative and other programmatic efforts. Before her work at Living Cities, Marian worked for over a decade at the local level in Washington, DC. There, she co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Columbia Heights/Shaw Family Support Collaborative, leading youth violence intervention, family strengthening, and community engagement efforts. Marian has been recognized as a Mellon Fellow in the Humanities, a Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leader, and an Annie E. Casey Foundation Children and Family Fellow.
A writer and poet, Marian lives with her wife in unceded Ohlone territory, also known as California's East Bay, where she serves as a member of the East Bay Meditation Center's Leadership Sangha.