Meet Vanessa
Vanessa Bird is Southern Paiute, a mother, sister, auntie, and partner. She joined CDE in 2020 to develop and deepen relationships with community partners, stakeholders, and funders and to cultivate resource opportunities to support CDE programming and initiatives. Vanessa is passionate about transforming the transactional paradigm of fundraising into one that supports connection, belonging, truth telling and community healing.
Vanessa’s journey – in life, work and education – has called her into deep and reflective investigations that center themes of identify, representation, and decolonization. This path has led to a broad range of experiences including fundraising and communications for environmental organizations and community development work for tribal communities.
Vanessa is deeply grateful to be a part of the CDE community.