Natanja Craig Oquendo is CEO of Boston Women’s Fund, where she is redesigning philanthropy to follow community leadership—not override it. Guided by the principle “do nothing about us without us,” she has spent more than 20 years shifting power toward the communities most impacted by inequity.
Since joining the Fund in 2020, she has tripled grantmaking, expanded partnerships from six organizations to 22, grown the operating budget from $300,000 to $2.2 million, and increased the endowment from $2.1 million to $3.5 million. She advanced multi-year grants of up to five years, pioneered a “Request for Conversation” model to replace traditional RFPs with trust-based engagement, and launched the Seed Funding Grant to expand access to capital for Black leaders and grassroots innovators.
She is equally proud of building an organizational culture that supports the full human—where caregiving is not penalized, boundaries are respected, lived experience informs decision-making, and sustainability replaces burnout as the measure of commitment. In 2025, she co-led Carrying the Weight, Leading the Change, a research report developed with UMass Boston, and founded Horizon Collective, a leadership initiative for women and gender-expansive leaders of color.