Andrus Family Fund
Leticia Peguero
Leticia Peguero will join the Nathan Cummings Foundation (NCF) to be its next vice president of programs. As the nearly six-year executive director of the youth and social justice-focused, Andrus Family Fund (AFF), Peguero brings a wealth of knowledge, connections and experience to NCF as she makes the move from one New York City-based nonprofit to another. At NCF, she will be responsible for leading the development of new philanthropic strategies as the organization reforms its grantmaking to be more responsive and impactful in the modern community setting.
Peguero, as the head of AFF, has overseen the organization as it manages a grantmaking portfolio exceeding $5 million per year in local and national grants. Under her leadership, all of these grants have been intensely focused on initiatives that help vulnerable youth and marginalized communities impacted by politically, economically and/or socially unjust systems.
This was not the first executive role in Peguero’s career, as she first came to AFF from helping to lead the student leadership development nonprofit, the Posse Foundation. There she served as regional vice president for over a year, managing city directors and programs in four cities as they identified, recruited and prepared student leaders for their college careers and beyond. Peguero herself is a beneficiary of a similar initiative, having participated in the one of the nation’s top student leadership programs—the National Urban Fellows. She ultimately graduated with honors with a MPA from Baruch College’s Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at the City University of New York. Some years earlier, she had completed a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Fordham University.
Her working career firmly in the nonprofit sector, Peguero spent about three and half years after the completion of her graduate education as deputy director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Local Funding Partnerships program. Prior to her master’s degree, she had worked as a senior health educator for five years at The Door – A Center of Alternatives in New York City, an organization that provides comprehensive welfare and development services to the youth of New York. This early part of her career also included time as an associate director of adult education at Planned Parenthood and as a manager of community relations at YWCA.
“Now more than ever, leaders in philanthropy must embrace participatory practices that both speak to communities’ needs and build on the strengths of historically underrepresented communities,” said Peguero in an NCF press release about the appointment. “I am very excited to join the Nathan Cummings Foundation, their risk-taking and innovative team to ensure our social and racial justice programming is well-rooted in a deep understanding of the history and the untold stories of the communities we serve.”
Leticia Peguero will finish out 2018 at the Andrus Family Fund before moving to the Nathan Cummings Foundation in early 2019.
