Proteus Fund is excited to share that Terrance Pitts is joining our team as the director of the Solidarity Collaborative. Proteus Fund launched the Solidarity Collaborative earlier this year to support intersectional solidarity between organizations and communities working towards racial justice through dedicated grantmaking and programming support. With over 20 years of experience supporting communities in building impactful, resilient, and intersectional movements for racial justice, Terrance is exactly the passionate, trail-blazing professional needed to lead this new, innovative donor collaborative, championing its vision and objectives.
Terrance first became inspired to support cross-racial and intersectional movements for racial justice working as a project director at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty to build solidarity with activists globally during the preparatory process for the U.N. World Conference Against Racism. Since that period, Terrance has developed and led impactful grantmaking investment strategies aimed at shrinking the carceral footprint and advancing racial justice.
As a program officer at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Terrance developed the foundation’s first U.S.-based police reform grantmaking strategy. As a senior advisor and temporary program officer at the Ford Foundation, Terrance led Ford’s $7 million annual grantmaking strategy to shrink the carceral system. For Borealis Philanthropy, Terrance launched the Black-led Movement Fund and Communities Transforming Policing Fund in his role as consultant, helping both donor collaboratives establish themselves and grow early on in their development. Just before joining Proteus Fund, Terrance supported advocates working to disrupt the racial justice and privacy harms stemming from bias-prone law enforcement technology as a fellow at the Center on Race, Inequality, & the Law at NYU School of Law.
Through it all, Terrance has directly seen the heightened impact and necessity of moving racial justice work across communities with a solidarity mindset and approach. We are thrilled to welcome Terrance and look forward to seeing the many ways in which he works with current and future partners to grow the Solidarity Collaborative.
