Jamie Allison joined the S.H. Cowell board in 2024. Jamie leads the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, ensuring that the foundation’s work expresses its values, resonates with community, and catalyzes the field. She focuses on organizational leadership, strategy, and governance. Her top priorities are to ensure that the Fund’s staff thrive in their roles and that the Fund’s practices and grantmaking advance liberation and community transformation. Jamie’s 20 plus years in philanthropy combined with experience in public sector consulting and local government enable her to understand how these systems can be leveraged to make real change. Every day, she is inspired by the community leaders who endeavor to dream and make real a more just society by widening the circle of care to include all of us.
Jamie earned undergraduate degrees in Political Science, Economics, Spanish, and Humanities from the University of Tennessee and went on to receive a master’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. Her breadth of civic involvement includes serving as faculty for Northern California Grantmakers’ New Grantmakers Institute, as well as serving on the boards of SFJAZZ, Next River, BoardSource, and The Whitman Institute, a spend-out foundation that coined and promoted trust-based philanthropy. Jamie’s insights and learnings have been featured in SSIR, Inside Philanthropy, Center for Effective Philanthropy, and Fund the People and Dreaming in Color podcasts, among other outlets. As part of her focus on improving the practice of philanthropy, she has served as a featured speaker at conferences hosted by PEAK Grantmaking, Women Moving Millions, Grantmakers for Education, Center for Effective Philanthropy, and National Center for Family Philanthropy.
When not at work, Jamie keeps active as a hiker and frequent attendee of music and film festivals and Major League Soccer games.