Program Officer, Racial Equity and Community Engagement
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Uma Viswanathan is a Program Officer of Racial Equity and Community Engagement at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Her work focuses on galvanizing communities in cross-racial movements and cross-sector coalitions rooted in cultural and historical integrity, to build collective power towards racial equity within and across Latino, API, Native, African and African-American communities. Prior to joining the foundation, Uma was director of leadership development for Urban Habitat, leading an innovative program that trained and placed cohorts of racial justice leaders onto local and regional boards and commission. Uma has also served as director of strategy at the International Association for Human Values in Washington, D.C, and was founder and director of Nouvelle Vie Haiti, a leadership development initiative empowering Haitian youth to build community resilience and urban food security. She is the Board Chair for the advisory board of Leadership Learning Community, which networks and resources leadership funders, practitioners and consultants committed to racial equity and systems transformation, and sits on the donor advisory boards of the AAPI Civic Engagement Fund, Funders Committee for Civic Participation, and Youth Engagement Fund. The daughter of South Indian immigrants, Uma holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s degree in history of science, both from Harvard University, and is a certified meditation teacher with the Art of Living Foundation.
