Seven Questions for Richard Tate, New President and CEO of The California Wellness Foundation

Photo courtesy of the CAlifornia Wellness Foundation.

In September 2023, the California Wellness Foundation, one of California's largest public health philanthropies with $1 billion in assets, welcomed Richard Tate as its new president and CEO. Tate first joined the foundation in 2016 as vice president of public affairs and later became executive vice president in 2020.

Born in St. Louis and raised in the Midwest, Tate finds it important to bring his whole self to work as a biracial gay man. Tate has over 20 years of cross-sector leadership experience in business and philanthropy. That includes roles as vice president of communications and marketing at Hopelab, a health-focused nonprofit organization that’s part of Pierre and Pam Omidyar’s Omidyar Group, and board chair of Northern California Grantmakers. Tate has a bachelor of arts in English and creative writing from the University of Southern California and a distinguished leaders certificate from the University of Michigan.

IP spoke with Tate during the week of his transition into the new role to discuss his background, current and future work at the California Wellness Foundation, and his hopes for the philanthropic sector. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What aspects of your personal history bring you to who you are today?

I stepped into a position focused on this intersection between health and social justice, supporting health and wellness for the people of California. I think about my own experience growing up as a young kid in the Midwest. I was born and raised in St. Louis and went to high school in Oklahoma. In that part of the country, my family and my identity were quite different from the surrounding community.

As a biracial gay man, my father is Black from rural Mississippi and my mother is white from rural Indiana. Being queer and biracial in that part of the country, I often felt outside of traditional expectations for community, and who belongs and who doesn't. I learned over time that the diverse perspective that I held within myself could be a source of real strength.

I believe deeply that right now, particularly in a period of time where the world seems so divided, each of us has intersecting identities that can be a source of empathy and compassion, whether those are racial or ethnic identities, gender and sexuality, or even relationships like family obligations and dynamics. I feel it's important for me as I stepped into this job to be who I am fully and completely in these spaces. When I choose to share my story in ways that support the work, the people who I'm asking to work alongside me, and people in the community who might see themselves in a bit of my experience, can also understand what I then bring to the perspective that I take as CEO and the decisions that I'll be making.

What are you excited about at the California Wellness Foundation?

I'm excited to continue pushing forward at this intersection of health and social justice. In the time that I've been at the foundation, the institution has transformed. As a private foundation, we've engaged other aspects of our capacity to move the work forward beyond grants. The work that we're doing to align 100% of our investments and endowment that we manage with our mission is incredibly important work.

The explicit way that we've named race as a critical factor in determining whether people are able to live healthy and well in California has been important work that needs to continue. We're at a critical time where the discomfort in reckoning with race has reached an acute moment with the affirmative action decision at the Supreme Court. There are potential ripple effects of that decision on Cal Wellness and others’ work that focuses explicitly on how race impacts health and wellness in our society. This is a moment in which we're being challenged to stand in our values and embrace this idea that our diverse identities don’t need to divide us but can help us understand where we're challenged as a culture and how we want to move forward together. That is work I want to see continue at Cal Wellness and will continue under my leadership.

Can you share more about this work that goes beyond grantmaking?

We have a broad approach to health and wellness and a strategy that we refer to as Advancing Wellness with four pillars: equity in access to quality healthcare, economic security and dignity, community wellbeing, and leading for power and change. Those aren't just grantmaking strategies, but a way for us to think about how we might harness the power of our endowment and investment dollars.

Through program-related investments, we’re investing in leaders, communities and issues that connect to those broad categories of work, as well. We have a diverse managers program in which we're investing our dollars with people of color and women in order to shift power and resources into the hands of the communities that we see as needing support.

We also use our voice. I joined the foundation as our first vice president of public affairs, which was about integrating our focus on policy advocacy, communications capacity, and community engagement work to hold and voice a point of view, and build relationships to advance the work beyond our grantmaking dollars. Voice and visibility is a key part of how we think about our strategic capacity to move issues in the world.

What’s on the horizon at Cal Wellness?

We are at a moment where [it’s been 10 years since] we launched the Advancing Wellness strategy, so as we navigate a leadership transition, it's an opportunity for us to reflect on how that strategy has served our communities and how we want to move into this next period. We've engaged with the Center for Effective Philanthropy to conduct grantee and applicant surveys and are assessing various aspects of the program and grantmaking areas. 

Part of what we've learned over this last period is to maintain some flexibility and be responsive to community. We did not predict the sea change in politics and government around the 2016 elections and the COVID-19 pandemic, yet we were able to adapt our strategies in partnership with communities who were sharing what they needed and what they were seeing happen. How do we incorporate those lessons and continue to build on our community and cross-sector partnerships, and maintain that strategic, adaptable framework in the spirit of advancing health and wellness?

What is your biggest hope for philanthropy moving forward?

I hope we continue to examine the opportunities and risks we believe we're operating under. There's so much untapped opportunity and capacity within the philanthropic sector, not just about financial power and dollars, but also about visibility and voice, and how we're using resources beyond grantmaking to fuel social change.

When I think about the risks that we operate under, there are relatively few in philanthropy. There are reputational risks and fear of being vulnerable to attacks based on the values and positions that we hold. I feel we owe it to ourselves to lean into a relatively luxurious space where there are few rules about how we engage other than that we fund nonprofit community organizations with the dollars that we're stewarding on behalf of community.

Let’s challenge ourselves to think about rules around payout and what it means to move more money to communities more quickly. Even as individuals think about setting up foundations or institutions, let’s challenge assumptions about what will really serve community. I'm on the board of the Stupski Foundation, which is a spend-down foundation, so that is a provocative model of thinking about not holding onto or institutionalizing wealth, but creating new pathways for money to get to community more quickly.

What are you reading, watching or listening to that you’re enjoying right now?

I've been thinking a lot about music and listening to jazz: vocal jazz, instrumental jazz and everything from Dave Brubeck to Nina Simone. I'm in a period of transition and music has become a bit of a metaphor. The rhythm of my days is changing as I step into a new job and acclimating to that new rhythm is really important. I'm at an organization where I've been proud to be part of the leadership team for the last seven years, but I'm in a new role. 

It's like being in a band and suddenly moving from the drum set to the lead singer position at the mic. Bands have to practice and learn to make music together, so I’m figuring out the new role and creating a bit of space. That's part of the journey that I'm on right now and it's exciting. Making beautiful music together is the goal and I think that at the California Wellness Foundation, we have a great staff and board, but it's a new rhythm under new leadership. 

How do you take care of yourself?

I am a runner. It's a good day if I get out and do my hour on the road. I don't run with music; it's just me and my thoughts. It's something that I do for myself and is important because creating space for myself makes me better able to serve and provide my attention to others throughout the day. There are times in my life where I've given too much of myself, more than is sustainable, but the tank runs dry, and you have to find ways to refuel yourself. Running, being in nature, and travel — experiencing different places and cultures — really inspires and fuels me.

Michelle Dominguez (they/them/elle) is a Queer and Trans professional born to Colombian immigrants on Tongva Land, known post-colonization as Los Angeles. After a decade-long career in higher education student affairs, they switched to the nonprofit and philanthropy sector in 2021. What brings Michelle joy? Quality time with loved ones, mindfulness, chocolate desserts and Disney magic.