How Ada Williams Prince Designs Investment Strategies for Liberation
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Ada williams Prince, senior advisor for program strategy and investment at Pivotal Ventures
There are few places in America that capture the public imagination quite like South Central Los Angeles. The political and cultural legacy of this community—now often referred to as South L.A.—has been influential and enduring, giving rise to creative luminaries such as Etta James, Ice Cube, Issa Rae and Ava DuVernay—all of whom pushed boundaries, shifted our angle of vision, and opened new possibilities.
Ada Williams Prince embodies the inventiveness and drive of the place where she was raised and brings its entrepreneurial spirit to her role as senior advisor for program strategy and investment at Pivotal Ventures, a funding initiative of Melinda French Gates. I spoke with Williams Prince about the importance of women of color being the architects of investment strategies, the value of lived experience in stewarding resources, and how building belonging is critical for an equitable future.
Tell me how you went from working in international development to philanthropy.
Throughout my career, I was always trying to figure out how to get into places where a Black woman wasn’t supposed to be. I also knew that I would have impact wherever I was, and that I needed to work with women and girls of color. I knew I wanted to work in international development, but I had to find my own path there. So, I went to a college where students had to spend a year working in the field.
I worked at a health center in Nepal that served refugees and the local population, which was my first experience of learning what it means to come into a community with respect rather than showing up thinking you are there to save people. And then, when the year was over, and I graduated, I looked for more opportunities to work globally. The Peace Corps was appealing, but I needed to pay off my student loans, which is a reality for so many college graduates of color today. But also, they weren’t recruiting the same way they are these days with a heavy emphasis on equity.
I ended up continuing to work with refugees when I moved to Washington, D.C. I learned that your formal background mattered less than the credibility gained from trust and relationships you had in the spaces you worked in. I never thought I would get into philanthropy, based on how difficult it was to work with funders from the nonprofit side, but I did. I became part of this crew of program officers at the Marguerite Casey Foundation who were brilliant folks of color working in this space, which was something I had never seen before. Working with them, I realized that there was another way of doing philanthropy that wasn’t transactional. My journey as a woman of color foundation professional, committed to greater transparency and authentic engagement with communities of color at all points of the grantmaking process, continued when I joined Pivotal Ventures five years ago.
What were the things you had to learn when you made the transition to philanthropy?
The Marguerite Casey Foundation was explicitly about racial equity and funding advocacy and organizing, so I had to learn what it meant to do that work in the context of movement-building. They taught me about building relationships with people and trying to reduce the power dynamic as much as possible between the foundation and the grantee.
I had to learn how to translate what organizations are doing into the language of money and impact so that board members could understand it. Through this experience, I found that in many ways, philanthropy has yet to fully unpack the root causes of its existence, and of what it’s trying to do for communities. For example, a lot of people talk about philanthropy as the stewardship of resources, but to me, the stewards should be the community, not the philanthropists.
How do you think about your purpose, and how does that show up in what you do?
There are systems that were designed to keep women of color, like me, excluded. My purpose is to bring us all in, which requires a combination of internal transformation and operating in a different way. One of the ways that this happens is for women and girls of color to have the space to speak their truth. That shines a light on what is usually kept in darkness.
A second piece is being the one to show a different approach. Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time building a Design Council of women of color—from movement leaders and community builders to investment capitalists to people with a long history in philanthropy—who are helping me to shape one of the investment strategies at Pivotal Ventures focused on women and girls of color in the United States, to ensure it is truly transformative. Often, philanthropy works with a big consulting group to use various types of data to make decisions on what to fund, but I have learned that the impact can be stronger when you bring people with lived experience together in a room and say: What does freedom look like to you, and how do we get there?
It sounds like you’re interrogating assumptions about what should count as data—since lived experience is a type of data, too—and innovating on design practices that, if we’re honest, haven’t been working in their current form.
That’s right. It’s incorporating the understanding that this world wasn’t made for some of us to thrive, and thinking about how we can rebuild a country, and a world, so that it is more inclusive. Part of that is recreating our own philanthropic practices. One simple way would be to make sure capital gets into the hands of women and girls of color so that they can direct the resources and make the decisions. Money is power, and power is influence. We have so much evidence that women of color take care of the entire community when they are in control of the resources—always have, always will. So when funders talk about getting the most bang for their buck, I tell them that investing in women of color does that in so many ways.
With the Design Council, I wanted an opportunity to imagine an equitable future that was built for women and girls who look like me—because if we do that, we will transform the world for everyone in it. It was truly liberating because Black women don’t often have the luxury of time and space to build a community and design an investment strategy. For Pivotal Ventures to share power and fund an investment strategy designed by women of color is significant, and I didn’t realize it until we were doing it.
The majority of organizations run by women of color are still having to work so hard just to keep the lights on, even the most famous ones whose names we know: Stacey Abrams, Alicia Garza, Tarana Burke. All these women are sacrificing so much to create a better world for all of us. I think about this line in “Captain Marvel,” where she says, “I’ve been fighting with one hand tied behind my back. What happens when I’m finally set free?” Women of color have been superheroes for centuries. It’s time for philanthropy to recognize that and give them the opportunity to do more, and to do it in a way that supports their well-being.
Philanthropy talks a lot about amplifying the voices of grantees, but the point you’re making is that the problem isn’t in lack of amplification; the problem is that people aren’t listening, and if they are, they have to also take action to change their behavior.
You could listen all day, but if you don’t act on what you hear, then nothing changes. How many times did Tarana Burke have to tell her story until those with resources really started to listen and take her vision for change and her need for resources seriously? A thousand? If we keep having to say the same thing, it means somebody is not listening.
How did you come to the values that ground your work?
It took me several years to articulate the values that show up in my work and how they currently operate in the world. It required a journey and being in relationship with people like Edgar Villanueva, Yvonne Moore and Leticia Peguero, who have been in philanthropy for a long time and know how to do it right. I had to learn about what it means to trust in philanthropy. I had to think about all the details and decisions I make, even down to who you work with as a vendor or consultant. All of that is tied to your values and how you live them out in real life.
What keeps you motivated to live your values so confidently when you are often in environments that make it uncomfortable to do so?
Some days, I don’t know. I have spent more than a decade working with refugee and displaced families. But it has proven to be just as challenging when trying to convince funders that funding women of color leaders is credible. It can feel harder than being stuck on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, where I worked in the past. I have been in areas of the worst disasters and conflict in the world, but working to transform who gets funding, and who is invited to envision where funding can actually have the most impact, has been the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
The goal behind my work is really for us all to feel we belong. I don’t come from a rich family. Some of my family is in the military, some are entrepreneurs, some are barely scraping by, and some have been in jail. The people you are connected to keep you grounded, and no matter what I’m doing or who I’m in the room with, I never forget their humanity. I’m not going to stop until we have a system that truly accepts us all and recognizes all our power.
Mandy Van Deven is a philanthropy consultant with 20 years of experience in strategy and planning, grantmaking, organizational development, capacity building and strategic communications in the philanthropic, nonprofit and journalism sectors—with an emphasis on gender, racial and economic justice and fortifying the infrastructure for narrative power.
