Rosa Maria Castañeda

Board Member

Rosa Maria Castaneda is a dynamic changemaker with a distinguished record of driving racial justice and economic opportunity across four of the nation’s most influential philanthropic institutions. She has led the design and execution of impactful philanthropic initiatives that seamlessly bridge advocacy, mobilization and policy development, consistently building empowered teams around bold, data-driven strategic agendas.

She is founder and Managing Director of The 2045 Project: Reimagining Latino Philanthropy, a fiscally sponsored project of Amalgamated Foundation. Prior to this, as Director at the Omidyar Network, she led comprehensive efforts toward centering equity in investment strategies and expanded the firm's partnerships in support of this. Before joining Omidyar, she served as the Racial Justice Initiative Director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Her work at the Annie E. Casey Foundation seeded one of the nation’s largest state and federal campaigns alongside racial equity advocates to successfully overturn anti-immigrant policies and co-led efforts to reorient the foundation’s funding to prioritize economic mobility in southern states. Her philanthropic journey began at Pew Charitable Trusts after a decade of rigorous policy research addressing economic and racial disparities at several of the nation’s leading think tanks including Urban Institute, Center for Law and Social Policy, and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

As a child refugee to the U.S., Rosa Maria is deeply committed to reimagining philanthropy to realize the promise of a truly just, multiracial democracy. She earned her BA in Sociology at American University, a master’s degree at the London School of Economics in Research Methodology and a master’s degree in Public Policy from George Washington University.