We are excited to welcome Trina Jackson as the BEAI Fund Director at Grassroots International, starting in this role on March 2. A longtime activist, organizer and trainer, Trina brings a powerful combination of political commitment and expertise with community-based organizing, facilitation, and social justice grantmaking.  She has decades of experience in a variety of fields, from environmental justice to ending violence against women. Trina joins the GRI program team eager to engage with the BEAI Fund Advisory Board, grantees, applicants, the BEA for Impact Initiative, as well as the broader solidarity programs of Grassroots International.

Prior to her role as BEAI Fund Director, Trina served as a managing consultant with TSNE MissionWorks, delivering diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) trainings and providing racial equity and change management consulting to a wide range of nonprofit organizations. Her training content included understanding the role of white supremacy culture as a form of dominant culture within organizations, systems and structural change, unconscious bias, microaggressions, intersectionality, inclusive leadership, and social transformation. She directed and implemented the Inclusion Initiative, a grants program at TSNE to steward nearly $800,000 in funding over a four year period to 16 grassroots, community-led networks within communities of color across Massachusetts and Rhode Island, to develop strategies to address the racial wealth gap in the following areas: education, community economic development, youth organizing, environmental justice and health. Trina also developed TSNE’s Urgent Response Fund, a rapid response grants program to support organizations serving communities uniquely vulnerable to the rhetoric of the 2016 presidential election.  

Trina serves on the board of directors for the Center for Story-based Strategy and Haymarket People’s Fund.  She is the producer of Grown By Herself, an independent multimedia project that honors the gardening and farming traditions of Black women.  She is also a Master’s Degree candidate in Public Policy at Tufts University’s Urban and Environmental Policy program.  

Her passions are writing, traveling, photography, and yoga. She lives and works in Boston.