Cathy Garcia

Cathy Garcia has spent the last twelve years in the nonprofit and philanthropic field, leading community-focused initiatives and mobilizing resources for nonprofits across the country. She has worked to develop, lead, and launch initiatives to build towards justice and equity. 

As the Director of Program Initiatives and Learning for the Dodge Foundation, Cathy works cross-functionally to facilitate the development or refinement of program strategies and approaches that strengthen Dodge’s learning, capacity building, stakeholder engagement, and grantmaking practices. Prior to joining the Dodge Foundation, she was Director of Funder Community and Learning at Resilia where she led and scaled a national learning network of grant-makers leveraging technology to practice more responsive grantmaking. She’s held program leadership positions at Robin Hood overseeing community-led economic mobility projects in Baltimore, Northeast Pennsylvania, and Cook County, Illinois, helped shepherd $30 million for inclusive and equitable economic growth at the Prudential Foundation, and supported grantmaking in over 100 countries at Citi Foundation. 

Cathy started her career organizing communities on environmental justice issues with New York Public Interest Research Group and CUNY’s Center for Sustainable Energy. She is a graduate of CUNY Hunter College and New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service. 

She lives in Linden, New Jersey with her son, partner, and rescues Simba and Kaya.