Natalie Bamdad (she/her/hers), joined Change Elemental in 2017. She is a queer and first-gen Arab-Iranian Jew, whose people are from Basra and Tehran. She is a DC-based facilitator and rabble-rouser working to strengthen leadership, organizations, and movement networks working towards racial equity and liberation of people and planet. At Change Elemental, Natalie supports racial equity transformation processes, governance and decision-making structures, practices, and strategy-setting to build a world where power and resources are shared in just ways. She has written about shared leadership, experimentation in governance and decision-making, and the relationship between systems change and racial equity.
Prior to joining Change Elemental, Natalie worked as a Senior Associate at Community Wealth Partners and provided strategy and capacity-building support to nonprofits at the intersection of racial equity and leadership development. In this role, she supported the design and implementation of leadership development programs for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the Haas Jr. Fund, and others. She also helped grow and develop the DC “hive” of IfNotNow—a movement of Jews to end her community’s support for the occupation of Palestine—and served as a strategy coach and trainer for the movement for several years.
Before this, Natalie worked in political advocacy consulting at the Atlantic Media Company where she conducted research for over 700 government affairs shops in grassroots mobilization, legislator engagement, and coalition building.
Natalie holds a B.A. in English and Psychology from Swarthmore College. When she’s not at Change Elemental, Natalie is organizing her people to dismantle white supremacy in its many forms, getting lost in a fantasy novel, making people laugh, and bringing folks together around good food.