Jonathan B. Tucker (JBT) is a writer, educator, performer, photographer, and DJ. He has performed and taught at universities, libraries, detention centers, and museums around the world, and has been working with young people for over a decade. Blending his writing, business, administrative, and communication skills, JBT has worked to ensure the sustainability of nonprofit organizations and programs like Teaching for Change, Boston Mobilization, Operation Understanding DC, Split This Rock, and the DC Youth Poetry Slam Team. Formerly the Program Instructor for Operation Understanding DC, a cross-cultural, leadership development program for Black and Jewish high school students, Jonathan is a trained facilitator and has led numerous trips studying the Civil Rights Movement. As Youth Programs Coordinator for poetry and social justice nonprofit, Split This Rock, JBT launched after-school poetry clubs and a regional festival for middle and high school students in the DMV area called Louder Than a Bomb DMV Teen Poetry Slam Festival. He co-coached the DC Youth Poetry Slam Team for four years, garnering national prominence in spoken word pedagogy and youth programs, and also wrote and won grants to expand the program, fund annual travel to national festivals, hire more teaching artist poets, and establish more poetry clubs in Southeast, DC.
Since 2013 JBT has won multiple Sister Cities International Arts Grants to bring artists from Washington, DC to the city of Tshwane (Pretoria), South Africa, and vice-a-versa, for poetry and social justice tours of the historic capital cities. He performed with his students at the South African State Theatre, led workshops in local townships, and helped launch the Tshwane Speak Out Loud Youth Poetry Competition. In 2012 he was a featured speaker at Lund University in Sweden, and in 2013 he brought two students to Sweden to feature at the Streetposia Conference sponsored by the Lund Center for Middle East Studies. In 2014 JBT was hired as a consultant for the YoungArts Foundation to coach the United States Presidential Scholars in the Arts awards recipients. He has led workshops and spoken on panels at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) national conference, the Limmud Jewish Learning Festival, the Muslim Interscholastic Tournament (MIST), the Split This Rock Poetry Festival, and numerous universities across the country and world.
JBT graduated cum laude with honors and two bachelor’s degrees (Sociology and Political Science) from the University of Maryland, College Park, and was selected to deliver the commencement speech for the college of Behavioral and Social Sciences. He regularly hosts open mics, poetry slams, and other arts events. As a poetry host for Busboys and Poets 5th & K, he hosts the open mic night on the 3rd Wednesday of each month.
Katie first became involved in nonprofits as a member of her university’s TEDx organization. She quickly became passionate about promoting social change through the arts and education. Most recently, she worked at the Dennis Learning Center in Columbus, Ohio where she coached self-regulated learning skills to college students and at-risk male minority high school students. Katie has also worked at the Columbus Museum of Art, the Smithsonian’s Freer and Sackler Galleries, and Cross MacKenzie Gallery. She is passionate about the way that art spaces educate, build communities, and stimulate social change. She is particularly interested in issues of transnationalism, identity, and gender. Her interests are heavily influenced by her experiences growing up overseas as the daughter of diplomats. To date, she has lived in six countries across the world, and hopes to continue traveling for the rest of her life.
Katie holds a BA in History of Art with minors in English and French from The Ohio State University. She graduated magna cum laude and is the recipient of the Barbara Groseclose Award for an Outstanding Paper in the History of Art.
Outside of Elevate, Katie enjoys traveling, cooking, and visiting art museums.
Portia is a social justice advocate passionate about youth development and equitable access to education and healthcare. Before joining Elevate, she served as a College Adviser with the Carolina College Advising Corps, an AmeriCorps funded program dedicated to helping low-income, first-generation, and underrepresented students find their way to colleges that will serve them well. This passion for youth stems from her social justice involvements in college. While in undergrad, she served as a Co-Director of Catalyst Conference, a weekend-long social justice conference for high school students. She also spent a summer working abroad in Panamá where she taught English to second graders and organized a health fair centered around water safety in the town of San Miguel.
Portia graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a BA in Anthropology and Peace, War, and Defense. Amongst other activities, Portia left her heel print as Founding President of the Society of Undergraduate Anthropologists, an organization dedicated to the edification of anthropology majors and minors and the facilitation of global conversation. She is currently working on a Masters in Public Administration with a concentration in Nonprofit Management at American University.
Portia has a huge sweet tooth and enjoys trying out DC bakeries. She also enjoys trying out new restaurants, perusing used bookstores, and watching Insecure.
Elizabeth has more than 15 years of fundraising experience and a passion for social justice. She loves helping nonprofit organizations secure the resources they need to pursue their missions and create positive social change effectively.
Elizabeth leverages her expertise and project management skills in a hybrid role at Elevate. As the Director of Business Development, she works with Elevate’s New Client Partnerships team to grow and sustain the company’s partnerships with nonprofits across the country. In her role as Senior Director of Client Services, she leads client teams of all sizes, providing development strategy and institutional fundraising expertise to organizations working on issues including public health, civic engagement and advocacy, social services, immigrants’ rights, international development, and education.
Elizabeth loves forming close relationships with clients to help them build and sustain a tailored grants program that meets their organizational needs and goals, addresses their capacities, and can be adapted to meet challenges as they arise. She is especially skilled at working with organizations with multiple tax statuses, including 501c3s, 501c4s, and fiscal sponsorships. Clients who are new to grant funding benefit from Elizabeth’s expertise in setting up the internal infrastructure (budgets, program design, systems) necessary to prepare to pursue grants.
Prior to Elevate, Elizabeth was the Director of Foundation Relations at Alliance for Justice, a national advocacy organization. She was responsible for planning and implementing the organization’s $3 million foundation fundraising program. She also worked as the Assistant Director of Development for Foundation Relations at Hillel International, where she oversaw foundation relations for a $26 million international organization. She began her career in development at various international organizations, including the Centre for Development and Population Activities, the International Planned Parenthood Federation, and the Council of the Americas/Americas Society.
Elizabeth holds an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin and graduated with a BA cum laude in Anthropology from New York University. She is also a certified ESOL (English to Speakers of Other Languages) teacher and spent two years teaching English in Mexico and Europe. She lives in Maryland with her husband and two sons. Outside of Elevate, she enjoys hiking and biking with her family, swimming, reading fiction, gardening, and listening to podcasts.
Pronouns: she/her
Since joining Elevate in 2017, Caroline has used her experience in nonprofit management and fundraising and her skills in grant writing, prospect research, and project management to support clients with various grant program needs and challenges. She specializes in advocacy and civic engagement organizations and has also worked with clients in the education, housing, and human services sectors.
Caroline enjoys working with clients to strengthen their proposal and report language to better articulate their mission and impact and build a grant fundraising program that aligns with their organizational needs and capacities. She aims to help clients focus their prospect research and qualification strategy and presented at the Grants Professionals Association annual conference.
In her prior position as deputy director at NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, Caroline oversaw development efforts and strategic plan management during a period of significant growth for the organization. Previously, Caroline worked as an account executive at a consulting firm supporting major donor and grants fundraising for national progressive organizations.
Caroline earned her BA in Government with a minor in Sociology from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY. She was a student leader in political and social justice activism and worked as a writer in the college’s Office of Communications and Development. A long-time Washington, DC resident, she is active in local politics and activism.
Stephanie has a a passion for education and youth development nonprofit work. Prior to joining Elevate’s grant writing team, she served as Program Coordinator at Access Youth, a local DC nonprofit, where she worked with youth and families in the Arrest Prevention Program and wrote program and general operating support grant proposals. She is passionate about identifying new sources of funding that will serve low-income and vulnerable communities.
Stephanie earned her BS in Political Communication from Emerson College in Boston, MA, with a concentration in conflict resolution and nonprofit management. She has 100+ hours of training specific to direct service youth work and nonprofit development. Stephanie is a trained mediator and has utilized her training to resolve family and community disputes.
When she’s not at Elevate, you can find Stephanie teaching (or taking) yoga classes, testing out vegetarian recipes, or scouring out new reads at the library.
Elizabeth first worked as a grant writer at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where she served on the development staff for many years. She has since done grants and development work for a range of arts and environmental non-profits, including the Provincetown Center for Coastal Studies, Writers in the Schools, the Houston Chamber Choir, and the Coastal States Organization. She is a true believer in the capacity of non-profits to achieve visionary, necessary work that is too often overlooked and under-funded, and her dedication to grant writing is rooted in that belief.
Liz graduated with a BA in English from Sarah Lawrence College in 1996. She worked for more than a decade as a journalist, freelance writer, grant writer, bartender and gardener while living in Vieques, Puerto Rico and in Cape Cod, Massachusetts while also traveling extensively around the world. In 2011 she moved to Texas to pursue an M.F.A. in literature and fiction writing at the University of Houston, where she taught English and fiction writing, and served as Director of UH’s Boldface Conference for Emerging Writers.
In addition to passions for reading and writing fiction, Liz loves to cook, eat, hike, garden, travel, play the drums, surf, and longboard. She lives in Maryland with her partner, their baby daughter, and two bad cats.
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Marcy comes to Elevate with a background in program management, direct service, and fundraising, and brings a passion for helping nonprofits succeed in achieving their missions. At Elevate, she has worked effectively with a range of small and mid-size organizations at both the regional and national levels. Marcy is knowledgeable in issue areas of early childhood and K-12 education, college access, workforce development, adult literacy, health, food security, and the environment.
A Rockville native, Marcy has lived in the Dominican Republic, Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Big Island of Hawaii. She holds a B.A. in Political Science and International Studies from Northwestern University.
When not writing grants, Marcy enjoys visiting farmers markets, thinking of new ways to use her cast iron pan, and spending time in nature with her daughter.
Tyler is a passionate advocate for the non-profit sector with a background in environmental advocacy and youth development.
She earned a BA in Cultural Anthropology and a BA in Environmental Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County before accepting a Fulbright Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State to teach English in Malaysia. She was first exposed to fundraising through canvassing work with Clean Water Action and report writing at the Chesapeake Stormwater Network.
>Since joining the Elevate team, Tyler has worked with nearly 20 nonprofits focusing on issues from environmental justice and race equity to hunger relief and youth development. She has experience working with nonprofits ranging in budget size from $400,000 to over $20M and has been successful identifying and supporting cultivation efforts for prospective national, regional, and local funders. Tyler particularly enjoys serving as a thought partner for her clients and developing new grant language that both captures recent program developments and demonstrates alignment with specific funders’ priorities.
Tyler regularly volunteers as an Emerging Readers Tutor with Reading Partners and as a Case Manager with Baltimore Abortion Fund. When Tyler is not in the office, she can be found testing new recipes, attending concerts, or muddying her shoes on a new hiking trail.
Oumou is a Supervising Director at Elevate where she primarily manages Elevate’s outstanding Project Coordinators and leads work to support the company’s information, systems, and calendar management process across all teams.
Oumou first joined Elevate in 2017 as a Project Coordinator. In that time, she has served more than 25 nonprofit clients who work in a wide range of issue areas including Education, Civic Engagement, Social Services, Advocacy and Policy Change, and Food and Nutrition. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Outside of work, Oumou is an avid sports fan. She is particularly passionate about Formula 1. Oumou also enjoys loose-leaf tea, discovering new coffee roasters, house plants, and maintaining her spreadsheet with her favorite movies.
