Emily
Gantz McKay, Mosaica’s
Founding President and CEO
In her life and work, Emily Gantz McKay has always set out to prove
that when community-based nonprofit organizations have the right
tools, they can become critical partners in creating just, inclusive
and thriving communities and societies. Ten years ago, after a lifetime
of helping people and organizations achieve their best, Emily gathered
a small group of colleagues and founded Mosaica: The Center for Nonprofit
Development and Pluralism to achieve that vision – with a special
commitment to strengthening groups that provide a voice for those
who are often overlooked when public policies are established and
resources allocated.
In more than 35 years of assisting nonprofit
staff, Boards, and volunteers, Emily has worked tirelessly to support
ethnic and cultural
diversity and the development of multicultural leadership. She
has worked with many communities of color and low-income populations,
among them Latinos, African Americans, Southeast Asians, Middle
Eastern groups, immigrants, refugees, farmworkers, women, and people
living with HIV/AIDS.
Emily gained much of her experience with community-based
nonprofits during her 16 years on the senior staff of the National
Council
of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights organization.
She served as NCLR’s Executive Vice President, among other
roles. Emily began her career with the Pittsburgh anti-poverty
program, and worked in mainstream and minority-owned consulting
firms in Pittsburgh and the Washington, DC area.
From its inception,
Mosaica has had a special commitment to multicultural work. This
priority reflects Ms. McKay’s own background – her
father was a Sephardic Jew whose family went to the Ottoman Empire
from Spain in 1492 and immigrated to the U.S. in 1903 from Transylvania – and
her experience at NCLR. Her mother’s family came to what
is now eastern Pennsylvania in 1703, fleeing religious persecution.
Emily believes that we must overcome the profound impact of the “accident
of birth” on life opportunities. Every child – whether
born in a farm labor camp in South Texas, a refugee camp in Chad,
a village in Afghanistan, or a mansion in Los Angeles – should
have the opportunity to be safe and loved, full access to education,
and the chance to develop and use individual talents. This can
happen only if people work together across geographic and personal
boundaries – whether race, ethnicity, class, gender, nationality,
religion, language, or culture.
The name Mosaica (the feminized
form of the Spanish word mosaico or mosaic) reflects how Emily
has brought together individuals
with diverse voices and experiences to create an organization with
common values and a shared mission. Mosaica’s Board and staff
share a commitment to social justice and a belief that societies
that strive for democracy, human rights, individual opportunity,
and pluralism must be built and maintained from the bottom up – community
by community, group by group. They need the active involvement
of nonprofit organizations and a strong independent sector. Emily
and Mosaica believe deeply in the essential role of nonprofits
in building and safeguarding the civic involvement essential to
sustaining democracy, multicultural understanding, civil and human
rights, and personal opportunities.
At Mosaica, Emily encourages
leaders to lead from their values, and develop organizations that
are financially sound, programmatically
creative, and accountable first and foremost to the people they
serve. To that end, she provides training, facilitation, and individualized
assistance to nonprofit groups in program and resource development,
strategic planning, restructuring, evaluation, governance, management,
advocacy, and coalition building.
Because of the value Emily places
on adequate resources for nonprofits, about eight yeas ago Mosaica
added a new emphasis to its work:
assisting in the development of innovative grantmaking structures
and processes, particularly for grantmaker collaboratives and emerging
foundations. This work began with facilitating the formation and
development meetings of the Latino Funds Collaborative, and has
led to work with the Ford Foundation, Meyer Foundation, Community
Foundation for the National Capital Region, and others.
Believing
that we all have a role to play as citizens of the world, Emily
has led Mosaica to work internationally. In fact, the roots
of Mosaica were sown when she first took a trip to Israel in 1987
with a group of Latinos, under the auspices of the American Jewish
Committee. Since then, Mosaica and Emily have worked to support
the development of civil society institutions – especially
social change and human rights organizations – in areas of
past and current conflict, including Israel, the former Yugoslavia,
Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
Emily’s generosity of time and spirit is boundless. It is
amazing that she has any spare time, but she always has both time
and energy to devote to issues and causes that are important to
her. She serves as Secretary/Treasurer of the Fund for the Future
of Our Children and is a Board member of the Academy of Hope and
the Hispanic Link Foundation. She has served on many other boards,
among them the National Hispana Leadership Institute, Mary’s
Center for Maternal and Child Care, the Southeast Asia Resource
Action Center (SEARAC), Refugee Women in Development, Inc. (RefWID),
The New Bosnia Fund, and AVODAH: The Jewish Service Corps. She
is a former non-lawyer member of the DC Bar Board of Governors.
Emily
has received numerous awards for the time and service that she
freely gives, including the President's Award, National Council
of La Raza (1989) and the I. Pat Rios Memorial Award, Guadalupe
Center (1988). She is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who
in the World, and Who’s Who of American Women. Most recently,
She was recognized by Ayuda – a Washington, DC-based organization
that provides legal, domestic violence, and related human services
for immigrants – for her years of dedication to that organization
and the immigrant community it serves. In thanking her, the award
expressed a sentiment common among Mosaica’s client organizations: “Your
wisdom and guidance have made us a stronger organization.”
Emily holds a Master’s
degree in Communication, Phi Beta Kappa, from Stanford University,
with a specialty in Race and Ethnic
Relations. She lives in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood of Washington,
DC with her husband of 39 years, Dr. Jack McKay, a research physicist
(he really is a rocket scientist) turned community activist.
Over
the course of her career, Emily has assisted a wide range of nonprofit
organizations, from large national organizations to
newly established educational organizations and coalitions, from
national Latino organizations to local community of color service
providers and advocacy groups. In fact, it’s a misnomer to
call this Emily’s career – we could call it her life
and passion. As anyone who has worked with Emily can tell you,
the people and organizations she helps are what motivate her. Her
husband Jack said it best: “What Emily does, she doesn’t
do for a living, but for life.” Emily’s work changes
people’s lives, and helps them to build strong, welcoming
communities.
