Ryan Palmer (she/her) is Founder & Chief Illuminator at RavensLight Pathways LLC, where she supports philanthropic institutions and nonprofit organizations seeking to overcome strategic inertia, deploy capital, and deepen their impact. She brings 20 years of experience working across the nonprofit, philanthropic, business, and government sectors, organizing people and resources in service of equity, justice, and truth.  

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​A recovering attorney and nonprofit fundraiser, Ryan was most recently executive director of the Horning Family Foundation. There, she led the re-design of a grantmaking strategy to support Black-led organizations and efforts working to build power and strengthen the movements for racial justice. Prior to that, she was Director of DC Community Initiatives at the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, where she led the design, development, execution, and management of the Parent-Child Health Initiative, which coupled over $100 million in funding with intentional coalition-building to improve outcomes for pregnant and birthing people, their children, and their families in DC. While at Clark, she also developed a portfolio focused on nonprofit capacity building, providing thought partnership and over $50 million in multi-year funding to support strengthened infrastructure and sustainability for community-based organizations in DC.  

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​Ryan holds a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Juris Doctor from the University of Maryland School of Law. She was raised on Piscataway land, also known as Washington, DC, and she is a proud graduate of DC Public Schools. She serves on several boards, including the 11th Street Bridge Park Advisory Board, the Capital Area Asset Builders Board of Directors, and Fund II Foundation’s Black Maternal Health Steering Committee. She is the co-chair of the Resourcing Radical Justice funders collective, the founding chair of the Banneker Alumni Society, and a member of the Leadership Greater Washington Class of 2022. Ryan is a dog mom and an amateur birder who finds peace and grounding through gardening, ceramics, and Pilates.