Anna Wadia, inaugural Executive Director, Care for All with Respect and Equity (CARE) Fund
EOF Steering Committee Member since 2018.
Anna Shireen Wadia is the inaugural Executive Director of the CARE Fund. For several decades Anna has seeded, nurtured and propelled movements for care and built bridges among funders and advocates across the care continuum. At the Ford Foundation, the Ms. Foundation for Women, and in her own consulting practice, Anna has led innovative grantmaking portfolios and cultivated some of the most critical work to achieve universal and equitable care policies.
Anna was previously a senior program officer for the Ford Foundation’s Future of Worker(s) program, where she focused on improving economic security and the quality of jobs for low-wage workers and their families by supporting efforts to raise the minimum wage, guarantee paid sick days, and develop new paid family and medical leave programs. Anna also served as a consultant for the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Ms. Foundation for Women, the National Council for Research on Women, and MDRC. Prior to launching her consulting business, she was co-director of programs for the Ms. Foundation for Women, where she managed a funder collaborative focused on women’s economic development. Earlier in her career, she carried out community and economic development programming for the Ford Foundation and Catholic Relief Services in Africa. Anna co-authored Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs: How Eleven Women Escaped Poverty and Became Their Own Bosses (Westview, 2002), as well as several reports on best practices in grant making and women’s economic empowerment.
Anna holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree from Yale University.