Vice President, Community Investment Division
United Way of Greater St. Louis
Throughout her career, Kiesha Hammock has developed large-scale systems change initiatives that are nimble, responsive, and attuned to the integrated and complex nature of social change. She is regarded throughout the philanthropic field for her compassion as an equity strategist, an astute knowledge of the nonprofit sector and having a demonstrated ability to cultivate regional and national partnerships.
As a leader helping to mobilize the community to create equitable outcomes and transformational change, Kiesha currently serves as Vice President of Community Investment with the United Way of Greater St. Louis (UWGSL). Through collaboration, communication, and resource connection at the nonprofit, individual and community levels, Kiesha leads strategy development by which United Way's investments are managed and allocated. Kiesha approaches her role with a solution focused-orientation for process design, inspiring team members, and activating community volunteers, working to build trust, implement best practices and deploy investments from the annual campaign that yield meaningful and tangible results for improving the lives of neighbors across a 16-county bi-state footprint.
Prior to her tenure with United Way, Kiesha stewarded the grantmaking portfolio and curated nonprofit support programming with the Deaconess Foundation. Among her contributions, she co-designed and managed the foundation’s responsive COVID-19 grant program tailored to aiding critically under resourced Black-led and Black serving nonprofits, she oversaw the foundation's external racial equity assessment process which informed her thought leadership as the foundation evaluated and transformed its grant portfolio in alignment with its liberatory centered strategic framework.
In previous roles, she has led teams responsible for implementing innovative capacity building models aimed at fostering organizational sustainability and improving programs serving Black and Brown youth. She has led efforts to increase behavioral health access for St. Louis County children, youth and their families, including designing immediate youth centered mental health programming in the wake of the Ferguson uprising. She has facilitated presentations on governance, philanthropic redlining and equitable grantmaking practices in an effort to dismantle and re-imagine funding practices that perpetuate systemic inequities.
Kiesha’s servant leadership has been illustrated through membership on several nonprofit boards, including her current tenure on the board of Philanthropy Missouri. Previously she served as chair of the board for Places for People. In 2015, she was named a member of the 10th ABFE Connecting Leaders Fellowship Program class. Kiesha holds a Bachelors of Social Work from Alabama A&M University and a Masters of Social Work from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. A native St. Louisan, Kiesha resides in St. Louis City with her husband.