ALICIA SANCHEZ GILL executive director
alicia sanchez gill (she/ella) is a queer, afrolatinx survivor and organizer from Miami, who for twenty years has been living and loving on Piscataway Land, also known as Chocolate City (and to some: Washington, DC). She stepped into the role of Executive Director of the Emergent Fund in June 2019. alicia believes another world is possible—and trusts the leadership of the people most affected by harmful policies to bring this world to bear.
alicia comes to Emergent Fund from her role as Interim Executive Director of Collective Action for Safe Spaces (CASS), a grassroots Black trans, queer, and non-binary-led organization that uses public education, cultural organizing, coalition-building, and advocacy to build community safety. CASS cultivates the greater DC community’s capacity to respond directly to patriarchal and state violence through transformative justice and abolitionist frameworks. Under alicia’s leadership, CASS organized across multiple issue areas impacting women and LGBTQ people of color in DC including the decriminalization of fare evasion, Black trans and queer sex worker-led organizing and the implementation of the landmark Street Harassment Prevention Act. She also deepened CASS’s commitment to a practice of transformative justice for survivors of gendered violence with survivor safety and anti-carceral praxis at the center of the work by leading the creation of DC’s first queer and trans people of color-led Transformative Justice working group for survivors of interpersonal and state gendered violence.
alicia has fifteen years of experience in cross movement organizing firmly grounded in Black, queer feminist theory and lived experience. She is deeply connected to local and national movement spaces, having worked, volunteered and organized with The DC Rape Crisis Center, Black Mama’s Bailout, INCITE!, DecrimNow DC! and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. alicia serves on the advisory council for The Constellations Culture Change Fund at the Center for Cultural Power, the Democracy Frontlines Fund, Third Wave Fund and the Abortion Bridge Collaborative Fund. She believes in continuous political education and building power in community and is a member of Mijente, Black Feminist Future and Southerners on New Ground (SONG). alicia’s work has been featured in The Feminist Wire, Latina Magazine, The Grio, The Journal of Family Violence, ReWire, Voices Journal on Psychotherapy, Chronicle of Philanthropy and she's been quoted in The Washington Post, Colorlines, The Guardian, and Bustle.
No matter which orbit she’s organizing in, her work is to bring a survivor-centered and intersectional praxis to building collective power and transforming systems. You can reach our team at info@emergentfund.net.