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Meet Isabelle Leighton, Our New Development Officer

Isabelle H. Leighton has joined North Star Fund as its Development Officer, responsible for managing fundraising and cultivation events, and for building relationships with individual donors, family and private foundations, and corporations. She is charged with expanding and diversifying the community of people giving through North Star Fund to support grassroots activism and organizing.

Isabelle comes to North Star Fund with a deep personal engagement with its work. According to Isabelle, "As a child, I traveled to Taiwan every few years and connected with my mother's culture and extended family. Since then, I have always been sensitive to and interested in immigrant life away from homeland with a particular interest in language and multicultural understanding. Because of the struggles my family faced as immigrants, I have a strong connection to folks who, because of cultural barriers, experience economic hardship."

According to Diana Correa, Deputy Director for Programs and Special Initiatives,  said, "Isabelle is the perfect fit for North Star Fund's development officer. She has solid experience and a thoroughly professional approach to every project that she tackles. Equally important, she cares deeply about about North Star Fund's social justice mission, bringing a rare sense of passion and commitment to building resources for grassroots-led social change."

Isabelle was born in Modesto, California and grew up in Fresno, in the heart of California's central valley agricultural belt. She graduated with a B. A. from University of California, Davis in English and Chinese. Since moving to the East Coast, Isabelle has held a variety of development and project management positions at New York nonprofits. Most recently, she was development manager at Literacy, Inc. and project coordinator for the H209 Forum of Henry Hudson 400 New York Foundation.

Says Isabelle, "By working at North Star Fund, I feel that I am finally in a position to contribute to the solutions to some of the challenges faced by immigrants and other individuals struggling for economic justice. North Star connects activists working at the grassroots community level with those who can also express their activism through giving resources."