CAMBRIDGE, MA—Geeta Pradhan draws on her deep experience in philanthropy, urban planning, and community development to address the needs of Cambridge, MA.
Ms. Pradhan serves as president of the Cambridge Community Foundation, known as CCF. She has led CCF’s transformation from a local Grantmaker to a data-informed, strategic civic leader that tackles the city’s most intractable problems in deep partnership with nonprofits, local changemakers, and donors.
In 2021, she co-authored the Foundation’s Equity & Innovation Cities report, highlighting the widening income disparities amidst Cambridge’s growing prosperity. She helped envision and structure the City’s $22– million Rise Up Cambridge program, the first non-lottery cash assistance program in the country supporting all eligible families at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty line. CCF is leading the research of the program to help make the case for policy change.
Ms. Pradhan is regularly called upon to speak on issues of poverty and social change, the changing role of philanthropy, and collaborative action. She serves on several public-sector task forces and committees, including the City of Cambridge’s Youth & Family Policy Council, Community Benefits Advisory Committee, and the Rise Up Cambridge Steering Committee. She also serves on the boards of the Kendall Square Association, Central Square Business Improvement District, and Philanthropy Massachusetts.
She previously worked for the Boston Foundation, serving as the associate vice president for programs and co-founded the Boston Indicators Project. Prior to that she worked for the City of Boston as director of Sustainable Boston and assistant director for neighborhood development.
A trained artist, she completed her Bachelor’s of Architecture degree in India and holds a master’s in urban design from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. In 2022, Geeta received the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from Lesley University, in recognition of her ‘changemaking leadership and dedication to growing the nonprofit ecosystem at every turn.’
On April 26th, 2024, Ms. Pradhan will be honored as the Outstanding Woman of the Year 2024 at the 21st Annual Woman of the Year Awards gala at the Burlington Marriott Hotel in Burlington, MA. The event will be attended by over 400 community leaders, social activists, entrepreneurs, academicians, and philanthropists.
To register for the gala, please click here.
Here is a Q/A with Ms. Pradhan:
INDIA New England News: Please tell our readers about your work and what you enjoy most about it?
Geeta Pradhan: I am President of the Cambridge Community Foundation – a foundation of and for all of Cambridge. We aspire to make our community vibrant, just, and equitable for everyone. Cambridge is a city defined by juxtapositions – success and shortfall, wealth and poverty. Not everyone benefits from the city’s success, and the gaps are widening. The Cambridge Community Foundation is committed to thinking big and pursuing bold, innovative ideas to solve our city’s most pressing problems. In addition to being a responsive grant maker that provides resources for emerging and long-term community needs, we focus on the health and vitality of the nonprofit sector and conduct research on the impact of the innovation economy on our city.
We hold a 60-million-dollar endowment and have the capacity to contribute funds to nonprofits and programs, leverage resources to support the wellbeing of Cambridge and its residents, and foster collective action among the city’s sectors. We live by four core values – the right to dignity; equity and justice; collaboration; and creativity and imagination – which drive our work and the way we engage with the community. The Foundation carries out its work through three key capacities – grantmaking, civic leadership and philanthropic partnerships.
Given Cambridge’s growing income inequality, this year we announced a new strategic plan. Our strategy is to “reduce economic disparities and strengthen community bonds to guarantee the future success of Cambridge.”
Economic mobility and social cohesion are the pillars of our plan. Both are fundamental to a healthy civic society and they are inextricably linked. To advance economic mobility, we must support one another; to have social cohesion, we must create a path forward for the most vulnerable among us.
As a trained architect and urban designer, the idea of city building fascinates me – not just in the physical sense but a more comprehensive sense. City building, to me, is about the kind of society we aspire to be, one that is driven by values of equity and justice, of vibrancy and creativity, where everyone can meet their full potential. I am also fascinated by the role philanthropy can play in creating a better world. To me, philanthropy is less about charity and more about change-making, which can mean tackling big problems in new ways and being open to innovation. My job, which is my passion, gives me the ability to live my personal values and use my strengths and experience to make a meaningful difference in the community. It gives me great joy to know that my day-to-day work makes a difference in the lives of people.
INE: If you’re engaged with any charity or non-profit, please tell us why this organization and what do you do for them?
GP: As the President of the Cambridge Community Foundation, I set and steer the strategic direction of the Foundation and oversee its management and growth. My interest is in engaging the business/corporate sector, the nonprofit/social sector, universities, and the public sector in the life of the communities in which they operate. I believe that this cross-sector collaboration can truly move the needle on our biggest societal issues – poverty, climate change, inclusion – and even bring more joy into people’s lives.
INE: What are your hobbies and interests?
GP: My work is all consuming, though I have a passion for cooking. I find it therapeutic.
INE: In what way do you feel you have most positively influenced or served the local community and your company/organization and professional field?
GP: Throughout my career, I have worked on community change. Early in my career I brought craftsmen and local artists into my work at the architecture and interior design firm that my husband Rajesh and I founded and ran together. We infused local crafts in our work to highlight these artists and craftsmen and to provide a livelihood for them. Throughout my career, in Boston city government, at The Boston Foundation, and now in Cambridge, community development has always been at the core of my work.
As I drive through and work in the Boston/Cambridge area, I can see my work reflected in Boston’s schoolyards, community gardens, affordable housing and economic development projects, the Boston Public Market as well as the systems and structures that support the nonprofit sector and the lives of families in Boston and Cambridge. I am intensely proud of the Cambridge Community Foundation as it epitomizes all that I have learned in my career. I was given the opportunity to build an organization and lead a team that values human dignity, believes passionately in equity and justice, and thinks out of the box. We strive to be a collaborative partner focused on impact.
INE: What is your rare talent?
GP: I think of myself as a very ordinary, curious, engaged, and mission-driven person…no rare talent here…though I can cook authentic and delicious Kashmiri food.
INE: Your favorite books?
GP: Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities. It’s a fictional conversation between Genghis Khan and the traveler Marco Polo, who describes all these wonderful and awe-inspiring places he has visited to a depressed Khan whose empire is crumbling. Marco Polo helps Khan realize that the stories he has been telling are spaces within Khan’s own empire. What Khan sees as the raging inferno actually has hope and possibilities, and if one is vigilant and willing to take risk, it can grow and blossom.
Poverty By America by Matthew Desmond is a non-fiction book about how the American affluence and systemic issues keep and exacerbate poverty in America. His other book Evicted is about America’s homelessness problem based on deep on the ground research and stories of American families.
INE: Your favorite quotes?
GP: There are too many to share only one. Throughout my life, I’ve found that everyone has something important to say, no matter their economic or social status.
INE: Who inspires you the most?
GP: Everyday people, particularly those how are struggling financially. They are among the strongest, most resilient people I have encountered. Despite all odds, they persist and do the best for themselves, their families, and their communities. I find that those who have the least are very generous relative to their income. They see the pain of others and step up to lend a helping hand, both monetarily and in other ways.
INE: Your core value you try to live by?
GP: Human dignity – the right to dignity for all.
INE: If you get a chance to meet, who is the one person you would like to meet and why?
GP: I have never felt that desire, I draw my experiences and knowledge from the world around me and often find very ordinary everyday people saying and doing extraordinary things.
