FELECIA BARTOW

Felecia Bartow (she/her) has worked to create positive change on issues ranging from immigration reform to violence against women to access to mental health care for nearly 30 years. She serves as a consultant to nonprofit organizations and foundations on program development, strategic planning, evaluation, and grantmaking activities.    

For a decade, Bartow was affiliated with Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR), beginning as a consultant and culminating as vice president. She lead the cultivation of fruitful partnerships with member foundations, immigrant- and refugee-serving organizations, policy makers, and others. She also managed high-level initiatives including a $78 million collaborative involving 21 states to support DACA implementation. 

Prior to joining GCIR, Bartow held leadership roles with various national nonprofit organizations. As associate director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, she coordinated policy advocacy campaigns to protect the human rights of refugee women and girls. Prior to that, she was the director of campus programs for Action without Borders-Idealist.org, where she led a team of organizers who provided training on public service careers and activism at colleges and universities nationwide. At the American Friends Service Committee, Bartow served as a national coordinator for Project Voice, a multi-state effort to help immigrants and refugees affirm their human rights and impact public policies that affect them. As the policy and program liaison at the National Immigrant Justice Center, she co-managed a statewide program providing legal services to survivors of domestic violence, and she co-chaired a task force on issues related to unaccompanied immigrant children.

Outside of the United States, Bartow has worked with refugees and asylum seekers at the Swiss-German border, and she served as a consultant to COMAL, an alternative community marketing network for small-scale farmers in Honduras. She was an associate producer of “Rights on the Line,” a documentary about vigilantism along the U.S.-Mexico border.
 

Bartow is a board member of the Frontline Workers Counseling Project, an initiative that helps connect frontline workers with free, confidential psychotherapy and counseling. She holds a Masters in Social Work and a certificate in mediation, negotiation, and conflict resolution. Bartow received her B.A. from Macalester College and her MSW from Washington University in St. Louis.