With more than 25 years of experience across the public, private and nonprofit sectors.
Decades of Experience
Deidre Lind is an award-winning community leader respected as an expert in philanthropy and civic partnerships with impact-driven results. Deidre co-founded the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles in 2014 as a platform for public/private partnerships focused on innovation and effectiveness and lead the organization through its unprecedented COVID-19 response efforts. In 2023, Deidre and the Fund received Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies award for social impact. In 2019, she created and served as the founding Executive Director of the California Volunteers Fund in partnership with the Office of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
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Deidre built her career over two decades leading corporate responsibility and philanthropy programs, including serving for a decade as Mattel’s chief global social impact strategist where she launched their two-percent pre-tax profit annual commitment, and delivered the Company’s first global sustainability assessment. In 2018, Deidre served as the President of the Pfaffinger Foundation, one of the oldest private foundations in Southern California, where she led a change transformation process for the organization. In addition, she has consulted to a number of corporate and nonprofit clients and government entities including larger bureaucratic organizations, and smaller, more nimble private entities.
Deidre currently serves as Chair of the Board of Accelerator for America Action, a national civic infrastructure advocacy organization, as well as on the Board of the Social Impact Fund and the Advisory Board of LA’s BEST, an afterschool enrichment program. She has also served on the Board of Southern California Grantmakers and in 2021, she served as Co-Chair of the Working Group coordinating the Council on Foundation’s virtual Annual Conference, Leading Together.
In partnership with then-Mayor Eric Garcetti, Deidre co-founded the non-partisan, non-profit Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles as the first-of-its-kind platform for the private sector, philanthropic organizations and individuals to come together to invest in the City and address the most pressing needs of Angelenos. Reporting to an independent Board of six civic leaders, she devoted almost ten years to the Mayor's Fund in two stints, raising more than $126 million from more than 12,000 donors to support more than 80 City-wide initiatives.
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Key programs included launching free community college in Los Angeles, expansive COVID relief for hundreds of thousands of Angelenos, government innovation efforts including the launch of the City’s first centralized Procurement Office, doubling the City’s youth workforce development programs, supporting expanded immigration/citizenship initiatives and leading numerous gender and racial equity initiatives. Among other recognitions, Lind and the Mayor's Fund were recognized with HUD's Award for Public-Philanthropic Partnerships in 2017 and with Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies designation in 2023.