Tanya Gulliver-Garcia

Tanya Gulliver-Garcia (she/they) brings practical, lived, academic and philanthropic understandings of disasters to her work as the Center for Disaster Philanthropy’s director of advisory and education services. In this role, Tanya oversees the development of educational content and CDP’s educational webinar series. Tanya also directs CDP’s expert advisory services, which help funders determine, manage and improve their disaster-giving strategies.

Tanya is a self-described “disaster junkie” who is passionate about ensuring the most marginalized and oppressed in our communities can recover and build resilience. Their work is grounded in principles of equity and an understanding of how the intersections of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, class and other identities affect the lives of individuals and their families/communities.

Prior to CDP, Tanya worked as the associate director of programs and planning at Foundation for Louisiana (FFL). Her duties included helping FFL strengthen its capacity to manage various programmatic initiatives while building an effective evaluation practice. They led FFL’s Equitable Disaster Resilience Framework, the associated Strategic Response Fund and the foundation’s LGBTQ+ Fund.

Tanya lived and worked most of her life in or around Toronto, Canada. Their work there includes serving as the research coordinator for the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness/Homeless Hub (COH), which works to mobilize research results to have a greater impact on the elimination of homelessness in Canada.

Tanya regularly speaks and presents on issues related to disaster equity, the numbers behind disaster giving, and building relationships between funders and nongovernmental organizations. They have appeared in keynotes and conferences, such as PEAK grantmaking, Res/Con, We Give Summit and National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters.

Tanya also worked as a freelance writer and editor for a couple of decades and served for eight years on the Professional Writers Association of Canada board, including three terms as president. Tanya is a frequent writer for CDP’s blog and has authored analyses and commentaries in publications such as Giving Compass, Nonprofit Quarterly and Reader’s Digest Canada. They are #TeamNoOxfordComma!

Tanya’s academic background is in sociology, particularly disaster and environmental sociology. Their master’s degree developed a risk-based heat registry to protect low-income and marginally-housed communities from extreme heat. Tanya has responded to several major disasters across the United States and in her adopted state of Louisiana with American Red Cross.

Tanya lives and works remotely in the Broadmoor neighborhood of New Orleans.