Experience
I am immensely fortunate to have had long career engaged in gratifying social change work. It has been wide-ranging across many programmatic issues and spanning functional roles such as fundraising, grant making, public policy, communications and nonprofit management. My academic training was in journalism (undergrad) and social program evaluation (grad school), and I have carried those skills across the years in a variety of leadership and consulting roles. With experience working on issues as diverse as public education reform, health policy, gender equity, justice reform, federal budget issues, behavioral economics, LGBTQ+, and fair labor practices, I am a generalist, but with a commitment to social justice. I love to go deep into new issues and help the people I work with think of new ways to communicate effectively.
I resumed the Hamill Remaley consulting practice in June 2025 after a 2-year return to working in-house during my time as a Senior Major Gifts Officer at Lambda Legal (2023-2025). It was an amazing tenure for me because I hadn’t previously had as much experience as I wanted soliciting gifts from individual major donors. Learning from the best in a large, sophisticated fundraising operation with lots of development resources and well-designed systems was extraordinarily rewarding.
My fundraising consulting for organizations such as Our House NYC, Leading for Children, CannaBronx, California Pan-Ethnic Health Network, Brand Justice, and Restaurant Workers Community Foundation has mostly focused on strategy development, institutional philanthropy and grant writing.
My consulting with grantmakers has included work for Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The New York Community Trust, and J.M. Kaplan Fund.
My writing, research and communications consulting have been with organizations such as Support Center for Nonprofit Management, Inside Philanthropy, and Public Agenda.
The range of work for these organizations has been wonderfully diverse, from small projects like writing and designing a conference report to more long-range and intensive work establishing an institutional giving program or developing and executing comprehensive communications campaigns. Clients during my previous constuling stint (2009-2011) included the Communications Network, Center for Effective Philanthropy, Grantmakers for Education, NEO Philanthropy, Public Agenda, Freelancers Union, Philanthropy Awareness Initiative, and Northwest Area Foundation.
From June 2020-May 2023, along with my consulting practice, I was the Editorial Director for Inside Philanthropy’s State of American Philanthropy project, which is producing in-depth briefs on dozens of subjects, such as “Giving for Workforce Development & Labor Rights,” “Giving for LGBTQ+ Causes,” “Giving for K-12 Education,” and “Tech Industry Giving,” to name just a few. In addition to leading the State of American Philanthropy initiative, I have also conducted independent research on definitions and measures of social justice and shifting power in philanthropy. The first stage of that research was made public in October 2022 with the release of the white paper “Philanthropy, Social Justice and Shifting Power.” I am currently leading a second stage of research aimed at testing the frameworks and eventual measurement tools.
From 2011-2018, I was Senior Vice President for Public Policy & Communications at Philanthropy New York, the regional association of grantmakers. My work there spanned the creation of an expansive philanthropy news dissemination service – including the New York PhilanthroPost and PhilTV platforms – to the creation of an entirely new government relations apparatus, advancing policy positions at the federal, state and local levels. I also led the creation of a new public policy fellowship program to advance our equity goals and produced countless policy-focused convenings, including seven extraordinarily productive annual meetings with top-flight policy star speakers.
Previously, I was the Communications Director for the Russell Sage Foundation, developing a new website for the organization, expanding its outreach to public policy leaders and promoting the deep intellectual work of its fellows on topics such as behavioral economics; the future of work; race, ethnicity and immigration; and social, political and economic inequality. That work was immensely gratifying, and built upon my experience as Vice President for Communications at Public Agenda, the nonpartisan organization working to strengthen democracy and expand opportunity in America by fostering thoughtful public opinion, meaningful public participation and responsive public institutions.
Prior to coming to New York, I worked for the DC-based Harwood Institute for Public Innovation leading a national initiative to increase civility in politics. And in the earliest part of my career, I was based in Philadelphia and worked for outstanding organizations such as The Pew Charitable Trusts, TCC Group and Temple University’s Center for Social Policy and Community Development.
I will probably always have the greatest affection for my first experience in philanthropy. When I was 21 years old, I got myself fired from T.G.I. Fridays for complaining about economic insecurity due to sub-minimum wages (an issue still very close to my heart and central to my work for Restaurant Workers Community Foundation), and landed at the Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation as the general office manager. I learned so much about philanthropy from that first foundation job and I have been in love with the sector ever since.
I currently serve as the Co-Chair of the Annual Giving Committee of All Souls NYC, a Unitarian Universalist congregation, where I lead revenue development and major donor relations to secure a $3 million annual budget. I am a former board member of Stonewall Community Foundation and of Restaurant Workers Community Foundation.