Grace Bishara

I've been in nonprofit professional fundraising for over 10 years, but my journey started as a cosmetologist and hair stylist before I felt called to get into nonprofit work. I worked as a Volunteer Manager at Habitat for Humanity and then became Director of Philanthropy at United Food Bank, where I raised their philanthropy to about $8 million during a pivotal time during the pandemic and really changed their entire philanthropy to be sustainable. I founded the Becoming Grace Foundation to help women and children in domestic violence after experiencing being coerced into a marriage myself. I saw the gaps that were in the system because not only myself, but some of my friends at the same time were going through it. Being in the nonprofit world, I was in the food security part of it, but that's just a symptom of a much larger problem. I got really frustrated and wrote a business plan and started taking it one step at a time. I grew a board of about 11 people, and we went from helping 10 people the first year to 362 the next year. As founder, I lead the vision of the organization and make sure the operations are meeting the standards of keeping true to being survivor-centered, survivor-focused. Anything we do, we make sure we do it through the lens of a survivor. I'm focused on growing teams and making sure we're growing a sustainable and great organization so we can continue to help more families. I'm more of the vision behind it and really getting the right people in the right seats to do the mission.