Making change happen: Alumna Connie Malloy talks community engagement and taking action

After graduating from Auburn Adventist Academy in Washington, Malloy enrolled in La Sierra University’s communication and Spanish program as an Honors student, graduating in 2000. Encouraged by those childhood influences, she entered nonprofit work with the United Way of the Inland Valleys in Riverside followed by work in Bolivia with the Peace Corps. She earned a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of California, Berkeley and landed a fellowship through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Thus began a career in urban planning, nonprofit management, civic engagement, and grassroots activism including top roles at nonprofit agencies such Urban Habitat—an environmental justice organization—and at the James Irvine Foundation where she led the California Democracy Program promoting civic and voter engagement and then co-managed the foundation’s statewide grantmaking portfolio, at that time aimed at promoting fair wages, benefits and protections for California’s workers.

For the past two years, Malloy has led the California-based Panta Rhea Foundation, first as executive director and now as chief executive officer. The foundation’s mission is to catalyze a just and sustainable world through food sovereignty, people-powered systems change and grassroots climate change resilience around the globe. To that end, the foundation directly supports charitable organizations in the United States, the Caribbean and the Americas, and leverages individual donors and foundations to do the same.

The impulse to create broad-based impact also influenced Malloy’s successful application in 2010 at the age of 32 to serve a 10-year term as the youngest of the voter-approved, 14-member California Citizens Redistricting Commission. This was the nation’s first truly independent citizens’ commission to redraw senate and assembly district maps, tax administration boundaries, and congressional districts based on census data and community input. We spoke with her about what her experiences have been like, from the early days of La Sierra to her grassroots work.                                                                                                     

Q: What brought you to La Sierra University and what are some of your memories of your time here?

A: I was just attracted to the geography of La Sierra as I had family in the area, and was really attracted to a school that at the time was really known for being more global facing. It had a lot of international students which was something I had appreciated at Auburn Academy, and also was a really inclusive environment when it came to diversity on all levels. …Once I decided to go to a Seventh-day Adventist university it was really clear which one was the best fit for me…I lived in the Honors dorm for the latter portion of my time there, [and] really enjoyed that experience and the friendships. I was involved with launching a student-led club, the Student Association for Gender Equality, SAGE, and learned a lot from my fellow students and amazing professors that I think really impacted my career. The class that most shaped me was the one on social movements taught by Greg Dickinson who is now at Colorado State University. I also worked at the computer lab so I have fond memories of wearing my white coat at the lab and spending some late nights up there trying to unjam printers, or studying at Denny’s.

Q: What types of grants and support does the Panta Rhea Foundation provide? In what areas does it focus its efforts?

A: The foundation’s mission is promoting and catalyzing a more just and sustainable world. For example, one of our main areas of grant making is around food sovereignty. Food sovereignty is a term first developed in the mid-1990s by the peasant-led social movement La Via Campesina to describe the right of all to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods and a community’s right to define their own food and agriculture systems.

In this moment of Covid we've all had experiences even when we live in very well resourced communities of ‘I can't always get local, fresh, healthy, culturally relevant food.’  Imagine now other parts of the country and world with less economic means and political power. Fortunately, amazing organizations are tackling this challenge. [For example] the Black Farmer was developed to promoted fair access to farming capital, reversing the historical discrimination of lending and banking that informs the present reality of Black communities. We’re so honored to support this and many other aligned efforts in the United States, Caribbean, and Americas.

We also have a stream of grant making around democracy that we call our People Power Fund and that's really engaging, much in the spirit of what I was able to fund at Irvine and the kind of work I was doing even in the nonprofit sector, of getting people involved in helping shape their community's destiny on the public policy front, in terms of civic engagement, voting, public leadership and policy.

Q: Why did you want to be part of the inaugural California Citizens Redistricting Commission 10 years ago?

A: My job at the time – Urban Habitat -- was very involved in community advocacy to eliminate toxic pollution impacts in communities. A big part of our work was influencing the decision-making bodies including commissioners and the elected officials, and so I was really seeing firsthand how critical those decision-making roles were within the public sector – shaping massive resources and public policies. I really didn't know what redistricting was, so was somewhat shocked to learn democracy’s dirty little secret. Politicians were really choosing which voters they wanted in their district – who they thought would most easily vote for them, paying a certain amount of money per district to have a guaranteed safe seat, rather than voters truly choosing their representatives. I was horrified, so I put my name in the mix just because I thought it was an important role.

I was selected as one of the independents that was seated on the commission and so it was kind of shocking. All of a sudden I was on this very high power, high profile commission because no other state had ever tried to have an independent citizens commission, so there were a lot of eyes on us. The public was rooting for us but the “powers that be” wanted us to fail. I had to pretty quickly rise to the occasion and get comfortable enough being in the limelight and working under stress, negotiating around really tough issues of politics, representation and race with fellow Commissioners of all different backgrounds. It forced me to step into leadership earlier in my career than I might have otherwise, for which I’m grateful.

Q: How did the commission go about its work and what were some of the biggest challenges?

A: The census data -- the numbers that we use -- are all physically coded on maps. Census data goes down to the Census Block Group, a very small unit of measurement. All the districts are built out of adding those census block groups together. You generally aim for equal population and equal power across the different districts – thus the phrase, “one person, one vote.” We did a set of public meetings all over California before we received the census data, just to get a sense of what was happening in the different regions. After we received the census data, we drew draft maps, did additional sets of hearings and incorporated the feedback. Boy, we got an earful of all the things that of course that we did wrong, because we were still trying to kind of marry the two different types of data! That was exactly what we wanted and needed, so our final product could better reflect our great state.

As a commission, we aimed to work by consensus and wanted to make sure everyone on the commission was able to express their opinion. The only times we really voted were when we had to certify the maps or other critical policies. Legally, we had to go on record for that.

There were a number of roadblocks throughout the process because we were also designing a statewide agency that had never existed before. There was no template on how to do this – we were building the plane while flying it. We had to hire our own staff, get an office, all sorts of logistical things in addition to this big task of designing the public process and drawing the maps themselves. We all made a lot of personal sacrifices to prove it could be done. We truly put our families, day jobs, and personal lives on the line.

Q: How did your work on the commission impact you and your career path?

A: I experienced firsthand how impactful it was as a public official to see really high capacity community organizations helping communities engage in the redistricting process and give testimony to the commission. If it wasn't for the role of a really vibrant nonprofit sector and philanthropic sector, we would have not even heard half the story of what actually existed in most of these communities. The James Irvine Foundation in particular had supported much of the capacity building and engagement around redistricting. Then, an opportunity came along to join the team at Irvine, to oversee their nonpartisan voter and civic engagement and elections related grant making. It was just a perfect fit because I could see the nexus of how critical that grassroots community engagement was and also the role that philanthropy and government and private stakeholders played.

The opportunity to later lead [Panta Rhea] foundation then allowed for a blend of the creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit of what it is to be in that community activism role that had been foundational to my life, supported with dedicated resources from a family foundation. It felt like the perfect mix. I truly love my job!

Q: Talk about your grassroots work establishing Kids for Freedom and Justice, and your earlier work creating a global support network for adopted and fostered adults of African diaspora.

A: Kids for Freedom and Justice was a pilot project that we started a few years ago in the L.A. area where we had a cohort of families that came together with our kids who were roughly eight to 12 years old. We gathered them together a couple of times a month and we brought on young adults as facilitators.

To help support their growth as social activists, we co-designed activities to expose them to issues in their communities and our world. For example, we grounded one month around exploring the stories of our families - where we all came from, what our experiences were like in that journey and what life in our home countries or neighborhoods might be like, however far back can be traced. On that same topic they were able to meet with a number of young adults with different backgrounds, some of who were documented immigrants, some of whom were undocumented immigrants, and hear about the different experiences and in some cases struggles that they had. It's just been a wonderful opportunity to build community in a different sort of way that that also hopefully is feeding our next generation.

Another world of volunteerism that’s dear it my heart has been a grassroots network for adopted and fostered adults of the African diaspora. These projects evolved out of my experiences as an adopted child whose biological family is a Black, mixed-race family from the Latin American Caribbean. I grew up with my adoptive family in many white communities with limited connections to people who shared my own racial or ethnic background. So when I was a young adult living in Oakland, California, I connected with more Black and mixed-race folks who were adopted across racial and international lines, going through similar experiences. We started coming together and having gatherings in our living rooms to share resources with each other and share our stories. Over time it grew into a larger group, working more virtually and with periodic regional and national gatherings.

Today, as I continue to support countless community based efforts, I treasure even more my many volunteer efforts over the years…the things we just do out of love and out of seeing a need and figuring out how can we start to fill it in. These transformative, challenging experiences of rolling up our sleeves in service of a better world here on earth have been my [greatest] learning, deepest friendships, and inspirations!