At the Imago Dei Fund, we believe in continuously learning, growing, and changing, especially in response to new needs we hear from our grantee partners, peer funders, and the field at large. In this spirit, while continuing to support new and current partners in 2022, we are also taking some time to get ready to embark on a new strategic planning process to shape our direction and priorities for the next three years. Our team is also spending this year learning about how to fund those working on climate change mitigation and on supporting immigrants, refugees, and other displaced people. We look forward to sharing any updates later this year. Many of you in our network have been integral to helping us learn and for that we are deeply grateful.

As we grow up as an organization, we are so excited to be working with three new (or new-ish!) team members:

Marie-Rose Romaine Murphy has been working with IDF as Project Director of The Girl Child Long Walk to Freedom project since spring 2020. The project, which started as a pilot reading journey, has grown in the past year to include a global fellowship program and virtual community with membership from around the world, and is an integral part of IDF’s work to advance universal human rights, gender balance, justice and spiritual holism. “It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to work with Emily, Domnic, and our team on supporting the development of The Girl Child Long Walk Project,” said Marie-Rose. “Globally, we are facing challenging times and seeing too many societies (including the U.S) take leaps backward when it comes to gender equality. As The Girls Child operates in the intersectional space of faith, gender equality and community-led development, we seek to work with faith-inspired community leaders to identify gaps in services and support the solutions they develop to meet these gaps and support the structural and sustainable change that our communities (and our world!) need.” Read more →

Leah Questad joined our team in January 2022 as Project Manager. Among many other projects, she is working with Founding Partners, Ross and Emily Jones, on launching “Project Multiplier,” an effort to build additional funder support for our grantee partners. Prior to IDF, Leah’s work has been in fundraising and development, and as a mentor and client service relationship manager for a multi-family office and trust company. “I am so excited to join the IDF team to further support the amazing work IDF and our grantee partners are doing both locally and globally,” said Leah.

Andrew Jones, our newest team member, joined IDF at the beginning of May as Impact Partner. Andrew’s role will be focused on operations, measurement and evaluation, and grantmaking strategy. He brings three decades of experience in international development and human rights, organizational change, and strategic and operational planning, and most recently served as VP of Global Education Programs at Impact(Ed). He previously served in various capacities for a range of organizations globally, including CARE, Oxfam, Save the Children, UNICEF, and International Justice Mission. As the brother of Founding Partner Ross Jones, Andrew has been a longtime informal thought partner to IDF. Said Andrew, “I’ve long admired IDF from afar and am thrilled to join the leadership team at this moment in time, with an outstanding staff and an array of grantee partners doing such inspiring work in Boston and around the world.”

Finally, in January we welcomed our tiniest new team member, Operations and Finance Associate Becca Riegel‘s son, Liam! Congratulations, Becca!