Kirin is Northern California Grantmaker’s Director for Climate and Disaster Resilience where he works to guide systems change and collective action in philanthropy to shift resources upstream to build resilience and ecosystem capacity around the increasingly disproportionate impacts of climate change. This work involves guiding, organizing, and convening funders across California to redistribute philanthropy’s wealth back to communities for transformative efforts that not only lead to near term outcomes around climate but build lasting systems and structures for self-determination. In this moment, that has begun to take the form of building the capacity of communities to leverage unprecedented federal funding, absorb capital, scale projects, and ensure meaningful and lasting benefit.
In his previous role within the Governor’s Office at the California Strategic Growth Council, Kirin served as both a funder and a systems change “advocrat” working to establish the state’s practice of investing in capacity building and dismantling unjust systems that limit access to public funding. As a funder, Kirin managed a portfolio of nearly $30 million in grants to collaboratives of partners, tribes, and local governments to establish the enabling environments and community-led planning necessary for long-term climate resilience. Programs such as the Regional Climate Collaboratives (RCC), Partners Advancing Climate Equity (PACE), and BOOST serve as enduring models for both state and philanthropic funders around ways to invest in shifting power and mobilizing collective impact in the climate justice space.
Internally at the state, Kirin led a public-private partnership with the Public Health Institute to establish and scale the Capitol Collaborative on Racial Equity (CCORE) – the nation’s largest state government-wide racial equity training, coaching, and strategic planning program. Translating lessons learned from these intersecting bodies of work, Kirin led several statewide efforts to shift policy and practice to remove barriers to access, including California’s first ever advanced pay pilot policy and formal cabinet-level commitments to capacity building and embedding equity across state practice.
Kirin began his career as a community organizer and non-profit leader in the transportation justice and community development space. As Executive Director of WALKSacramento (now CivicThread), he worked to weave principles of the social determinants of health, racial equity, and economic justice through local land use planning policies and increase the Sacramento region’s competitiveness for critical infrastructure funding. This work involved transformative approaches through the Design 4 Active Sacramento Coalition to deepen partnerships between public health and community development agencies to institutionalize environmental justice and facilitate more meaningful government collaboration with communities.
Kirin holds a degree in Environmental Policy and Planning from UC Davis and was a 2019 Rockwood Building Power Fellow. He lives in Sacramento with his wife and their dog Eddie and loves exploring northern California’s beautiful and diverse natural landscapes.
