Leader Moving From a Small Charity to a Big Foundation Finds a New Voice

Christine Marquez-Hudson took the helm of the Mi Casa Resource Center in Denver just as the Great Recession started to bear down. It was a challenging time to be a nonprofit leader, but she led the small social-services group’s charge into green-jobs training. Mi Casa’s early adoption helped it win a $3.6 million grant as part of the federal government’s stimulus effort, a huge amount that increased the number of people the group could serve and boosted its profile in the city.

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Last year, Ms. Marquez-Hudson took on what she calls her dream job — CEO of the Denver Foundation — and joined the small but growing ranks of Latinos who lead large foundations.

She’s excited to build on the fund’s 92-year history while creating new ways to help more people give: “We want to be a community foundation that is known to be a home for all philanthropists.”

There’s one thing Ms. Marquez-Hudson is still working on: how to calibrate her leadership style to her new platform.

The executive director of a small, ethnic organization has to beat her chest to get attention, while the head of the largest community foundation in the Mountain West has a bully pulpit, says Ms. Marquez-Hudson.

“You can’t go out and be a megaphone on every issue, every day, or people will stop listening to you.”