Breaking Down Structual Racism in Grantmaking

Jaren Bonillo is the Senior Program Officer at the San Francisco Arts Commission providing leadership in grant-making strategy, cultural equity and community arts investments through the distribution of approximately eleven million dollars annually to nonprofit arts organizations and individual artists. 

As a grantmaker, nonprofit director, and artist, Ms. Bonillo has over 15 years of experience in the arts and culture field. Prior to joining the San Francisco Arts Commission (SFAC), she oversaw the California Arts Council’s (CAC) state-wide general operating grant programs, the State-Local Partnership program, and the Statewide and Regional Networks grant, as well as the Professional and Organizational Development grant programs. She also served on the CAC’s Equity Committee and co-led the CAC’s participation in the Government Alliance for Racial Equity (GARE) Capitol Cohort. 

She holds an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and a BFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University.

In her role at HAA, Deidre’s portfolio includes oversight of five, city-funded grants programs that drive cultural programming throughout Houston. Her team focuses on continuous improvement, a culture of listening and learning, increased transparency, and philanthropic equity. She works closely with the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs to develop and implement strategy, policies, processes, and special initiatives to support, shape, serve, and lead the cultural landscape in the nation’s most diverse city.  

Deidre served a 3-year term on AFTA’s Emerging Leaders Council & was awarded a fellowship with the Culture Lab Library, a project of Alan Brown of WolfBrown, to curate a collection of literature and other media responding to inequity in cultural funding. Her panel service includes the 2018 Cuyahoga Arts & Culture Project, 2018 Project Row Houses and Center for Art and Social Engagement Fellowship, and Fresh Arts’ 2020 Artists Inc.. 

Deidre holds a B.S. from University of Houston in Sociology with a minor in African American Studies, and a certificate in Nonprofit Management from the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance program (formerly American Humanics). She currently serves as an advisory board member for Robin’s House Family Foundation and as board member for G.R.A.E. (Growing Real Alternatives Everywhere), youth and social justice organizations respectively. 

Kathy Hsieh is the Cultural Partnerships & Grants Manager for the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. A change agent in transforming the Office’s community engagement and arts funding practices through a racial equity lens, she helped the agency earn Seattle Management Association’s first Race & Social Justice Management Award through her work developing innovative funding strategies that center the expertise and experience of communities of color. She leads the Office’s grantmaking team and manages the team’s organizational support programs. She is frequently invited to share her expertise with arts funders throughout the United States and Canada and has been involved with a racial equity learning cohort of Arts funders that developed RE-Tool: Racial Equity in the Panel Process, a collaboratively designed resource for grantmakers to address racial equity in the panel process. She has served on advisory committees, boards, or panels for many community groups including People of Color in Philanthropy and Theatre Puget Sound and has been honored as Verizon’s Asian Pacific American Bash’s Innovator Award in 2012, is the 2015 International Examiner Community Voice Awardee in the Arts, received the Gregory Award for Sustained Achievement in 2017, and the Seattle Chinese American Citizens Alliance’s 2019 Fred Yee Citizens Award.