Ashindi is an independent strategist and donor advisor in democracy reform, social and racial justice. She has developed funding strategies informing more than $100 million in investments from some of the largest foundations and individual donors in the United States  - including the Democracy Alliance, the Ford Foundation, The Women Donors Network, the Sandler Family Foundation, and PowerPAC.

Ashindi co-founded the Emergent Fund, a post 2016 election rapid response fund supporting organizing in the most impacted communities where Muslim, Black, immigrant, Latino, Asian, women, and LGBTQ leaders took the lead in decision-making and were the primary recipients of over $1 million raised in the first 100 days of the new Administration. In May of 2016 she also co-authored, with Urvashi Vaid, the first comprehensive report on high net worth donors of color titled, “The Apparitional Donor: Understanding and Engaging High Net Worth Donors of Color”.

She also piloted voter engagement projects geared at Asian American voting, voter registration in community health clinics and ran a witness search and data collection effort which proved to be pivotal in overturning the Pennsylvania voter ID law in 2012. 

Prior to all of this, Ashindi worked in education. She was the principal of an elementary arts charter school, a Spanish bilingual fifth grade teacher, and a policy fellow to the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Education. She was also a Fulbright Scholar to the Dominican Republic where she published the first national study on race consciousness in Dominican children.

In addition to her work in philanthropy, Ashindi has served as the National Policy Director of the NAACP and the National Director of Political Partnerships for SEIU International. Ashindi serves on the boards of the Texas Organizing Project and Free Speech TV. She has been listed three times to Washington Magazine’s “Young and the Guest List” of forty and under geniuses, visionaries, crusaders and innovators shaping Washington's future” in addition to the “NAACP Power 40” list of most influential African-Americans under forty.

Ms. Maxton is a graduate of Vassar College and has a Masters degree in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. It's hard to think of someone more accomplished in her field.  So grateful that she carved out time for us today.  Enjoy the show!