Silvana Straw: Affecting Community Change for 34 Years

“Passionate, deeply knowledgeable, committed, thoughtful, responsive,” – these are the adjectives one Greater Washington Community Foundation donor uses to describe Silvana Straw, The Community Foundation’s longest-serving staff member. Silvana recently marked her 34th year with the organization.

She is also a grantmaker, advocate, thought leader, connector, community builder, humanitarian, artist, poet, writer, performer – and The Community Foundation’s Senior Community Investment Officer and Philanthropic Advisor. For more than three decades, Silvana has worn many hats, but her focus has remained the same: to advance social justice and create a racially just and thriving region.

Silvana says her parents raised her to be a truth-teller and use her voice for good. As a result, she understands how critical it is to center The Community Foundation’s work around the voices of community members. Her work as a grantmaker and leader of strategic initiatives over the decades demonstrates her commitment to community-led change and to partnering with people directly affected by the issues The Community Foundation seeks to address.

Calling The Community Foundation “a creative laboratory for affecting real community change,” her fingerprints are on nearly every issue it has addressed, from the arts to youth civic engagement, from affordable housing to the safety net. She helped develop and lead the Circle of Hope (a neighborhood-based violence prevention initiative), the Linowes Leadership Awards, Greater Washington Creative Communities Initiative, Greater Washington Youth Philanthropy Initiative, Neighbors in Need Fund, the Partnership to End Homelessness, and many other initiatives.   

Asking her to name her favorite initiative is like asking a parent to single out their favorite child. When pressed, she says she is most proud of her work addressing homelessness and the affordable housing crisis. In 2014, Silvana conceptualized and oversaw the first comprehensive study documenting the region’s housing affordability crisis, which revealed the acute need for affordable housing across all income levels, particularly for extremely low-income renters. This study laid the groundwork for The Community Foundation’s current housing justice work including the Partnership to End Homelessness for which she has provided critical leadership in both its development and implementation.  

Silvana credits her many mentors with encouraging her to “speak truth to power.” Her mentors include philanthropist Diane Bernstein; social justice advocate Pablo Eisenberg; community builder and grantmaker MaryAnn Holohean, international development leader Charito Kruvant; former DC Fiscal Policy Institute Director Ed Lazere; and Tom Lewis, founder of The Fishing School.

“I met Silvana when she was a young woman and had just started her work at The Community Foundation,” said Kruvant, founder of Creative Associates International and a longtime Community Foundation donor and board member. “Throughout all these many years, Silvana has always worked to support the marginalized and the disempowered. With hard work, she always assisted people in the region to organize and build healthy communities. It is my joy to consider Silvana my friend.”

Silvana has helped build The Community Foundation’s assets and has raised significant funds for its many initiatives over the years. She is also a valued advisor, trusted partner, and resource to donors. Adds an anonymous donor of The Community Foundation “With Silvana’s help we learned more and more to understand the depths of many generations of racial discrimination and its continued impact today in DC, in the housing crisis and beyond. This led us to support the Douglass Community Land Trust and community organizing and advocacy efforts to help address the vast differences in wealth between Black and white households. Silvana also made it possible for us to support institutions that assist immigrants to obtain legal and social support. Silvana’s knowledge of community leaders and nonprofits that are the ‘go-to’ source on particular issues led us into many years of support of the DC Fiscal Policy Institute and the DC Alliance of Youth Advocates.”

“Silvana is an amazing partner for the organizations that are fighting for the people with the lowest incomes,” said Ed Lazere, Director of Legislative Advocacy with the United Planning Organization. “She is often the first to respond when a crisis emerges,” he says, citing the example of when the District threatened to cut emergency rental assistance. Calling her “an advocate to the core,” Lazere added, “Silvana understands why advocacy has to be firm, insistent, and unapologetic.”

On Silvana’s desk is a stone painted with the image of a gazelle, a personal reminder of the importance of movement and change—as she navigates a packed schedule of meetings with the countless donors, nonprofit leaders, and community members committed to making that change happen.