(Originally posted May 2014)
Rahsaan Harris is Executive Director of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthrophy (EPIP). Founded in 2001, EPIP is a national network of foundation professionals and social entrepreneurs who strive for excellence in the practice of philanthropy. Its mission is to develop emerging leaders committed to building a just, equitable, and sustainable society.
Rahsaan Harris has over 10 years of experience working in Philanthropy and Non-Profits. Additionally his experience includes teaching high school and serving as a volunteer in the Peace Corps. His expertise is in grant-making, organizational assessment, diversity and teaching. He also has strong consulting, facilitation and fund-raising skills.
Mr. Harris holds a doctorate in Public and Urban Policy from The New School in New York City. His dissertation examined the philanthropic influences and interests of African-Americans. Rahsaan also holds a Masters in Management from NYU and a Masters in Education from Columbia University. A native of Piscataway, New Jersey, Harris majored in ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton and was a member of the BodyHype dance troupe. A varsity athlete, he played sprint football and ran the 400 meters for the track team.
From 2003 until December 2010, Mr. Harris worked as a fellow and Program Executive at The Atlantic Philanthropies, an international foundation with assets over $3 billion. At Atlantic, he led diversity and racial equity initiatives, managed such initiatives as the foundation’s philanthropic response to the Haitian buy viagra walgreen Earthquake and oversaw annual grants of $2 million to promote social justice outcomes for youth and older adults in Bermuda.
Before joining Atlantic, Mr. Harris served as the Executive Director of Playing2Win, one of the country’s first public access technology learning centers to be established in an inner-city, low-income area. Prior to Playing2Win, Mr. Harris received a fellowship from the Open Society Institute of the Soros Foundation to work with HarlemLive, a web-based publication run by Harlem teens. The focus of his fellowship was to create and implement a plan for the organization’s growth and sustainability.
Before HarlemLive, he taught science in New York City public schools between 1997 and 2000 and served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Uruguay from 1995 to 1997. Harris volunteers for a number of youth organizations, and is particularly interested in FC Harlem, the home of Harlem Youth Soccer. “Soccer is a world sport,” he points out, “so the kids get an insight into an aspect of world culture along with their game.”
He is a Board member of the Upper Room AIDS Ministry and FROST’D (the Foundation for Research on Sexually Transmitted Diseases); a member of the Council on Foundation’s professional development committee; and a Big Brothers Big Sisters mentor. He also volunteers as a research fellow at the Twenty-First Century Foundation and participates on New York Blacks in Philanthropy’s leadership team.