My philanthropy experience began when I decided to participate in the 2024–25 Bowie State University Philanthropy Fellowship Program, an initiative preparing the next generation of philanthropic leaders for success, and was given the opportunity to spend a year at PEAK Grantmaking. Reflecting on my time here, this experience awakened something in me that will influence how I show up in philanthropic spaces and everywhere I go. It’s also an experience that creates a reproducible blueprint for building a pathway directly into the field, which allows students or those interested in entering philanthropy to reflect their values throughout their work in ways that can shift the sector.

My journey began with the operations team, where I learned about centering people in processes. For example, PEAK’s objectives and key results framework outlines the organization’s goals and key projects and how each body of work directly supports PEAK’s strategy. This framework creates organization-wide visibility into how each team is supporting PEAK’s objectives and allows each employee to see how they’re actively contributing to shifting the sector. To support the OKRs, and to create clarity on project leadership and organization-wide accountability, the operations team implemented the Accountability, Responsibility, Supported, Consulted, Informed (ARSCI) framework.

I also learned the importance of interdepartmental collaboration and how the perspectives of colleagues on other teams can enrich my own work as part of preparing the next generation for success in the philanthropic sector. For example, when I was tasked with creating a staff evaluation form to help assess PEAK’s four-day workweek program, I met with Alberto Espinoza on the knowledge and learning team who showed me how to structure questions so that I’d get responses that would best shed light on how the program was functioning and how it might be improved. By prioritizing interdepartmental collaboration and removing silos, I was better able to meet my goals.

Even this early in my career, I can narrow power gaps and build organizational cultures centered on equity.

Evaluation design work was especially human-centered because I also had the opportunity to pair it with a one-page self-compassion resource. Through research, I created this resource to help employees build on the intentions of the four-day workweek by amplifying wellness at work, taking them through an exercise to assess how hard they are on themselves when it comes to work, and offering activities and practices to challenge those negative thought patterns.

Read the full article about preparing future philanthropic leaders by Telicia Farmer at PEAK Grantmaking.