Rosa Maria Castañeda

Rosa Maria Castañeda is a Director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In her role, she supports the foundation’s president to advance special projects that help Hewlett connect to, learn from, and support the broader racial justice community within the United States.

She has deep experience designing major philanthropic initiatives and bridging advocacy, mobilization, and policy development to achieve racial and economic justice and advance family and child wellbeing. At the Annie E. Casey Foundation, Rosa Maria helped win economic support for immigrants through seeding the largest state and federal campaign with racial equity, immigrant rights, and child advocacy groups. While there, she also shifted the foundation’s investments to focus on advancing economic mobility in southern states.

Rosa Maria began her career in philanthropy at Pew Charitable Trusts after a decade developing actionable policy research to tackle economic and racial inequality at the nation’s leading think tanks, including Urban Institute, Center for Law and Social Policy, and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

A child refugee to the U.S., she is motivated to reimagine philanthropy, government, and business to realize the promise of a just multiracial democracy. She serves as an advisor to numerous philanthropic associations. Rosa Maria holds a Bachelor of Arts from American University, a Master of Science in research methods and social policy from the London School of Economics, and a Master of Public Policy from George Washington University.