Kristi Cunningham Whitfield

Chief Impact Officer and Senior Director of Racial Justice

Kristi C. Whitfield is a seasoned executive who brings an entrepreneurial approach to systemic change.  As the Chief Impact Officer and Senior Director of Racial Justice, Kristi helps guide and measure our strategic efforts to leverage all the foundation’s assets in ways that advance impact toward racial, economic, and environmental justice (REEJ). She also oversees our racial-justice grantmaking portfolio. 

The through-line of Kristi’s career, which spans the nonprofit, for-profit and government sectors, is social justice, and balancing the scales of opportunity. She began her career in the nonprofit arena of housing and community economic development. At the local level in Boston and Washington, DC, Kristi created programs designed to undermine systemic inequality.  She developed affordable housing, taught economic literacy classes, and designed community programming.  Kristi gained a national perspective on community economic development as the coordinator of the $65 million National Community Development Initiative for the Enterprise Foundation.  

Kristi took a detour into the for-profit world when she founded Washington DC’s first mobile cupcake company, Curbside Cupcakes. Kristi grew into a professional baker and her business grew to 3 trucks and a brick and mortar location.  As the Founding Chairperson of the DC Food Truck Association,  Kristi successfully advocated for groundbreaking vending law reform. 

Most recently, Kristi served in local government as the Director of the DC Department of Small and Local Business Development.  She led the agency to address barriers to the marketplace through access to capital, programming, and grants. Racial equity was woven throughout many of the programs that thrived under Kristi’s leadership.  She created groundbreaking initiatives like the $6 million Commercial Acquisition Fund that helps local businesses build wealth through property ownership. The Aspire pitch program helped returning citizens grow their businesses, and boasted a recidivism rate of under 1%.  The Dream Grant program supported the business growth of people of color from the city’s most under-resourced neighborhoods.  In this role, Kristi oversaw the allocation of over $1billion to the small business community, the majority of whom were people of color. 

Kristi attended Swarthmore College where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology with a concentration in Black Studies, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) where she received a Master of City Planning degree with a focus in Housing and Community Development.