Liz Welch

Director of Advancement

Liz Welch (she/her), over the last decade, she has raised more than $100 million for Indigenous-led organizations across the country, advancing their work in culturally-grounded education, food sovereignty, economic development, and more. Her passion is supporting leaders and organizations grow their own capacity to confront unjust systems and accelerate community change.

Through a strong curiosity about the impact of large scale systems, Liz recognized early in her career that supporting community-led systems change is the way to building a more just world. From 2014 to 2018, she served as Director of Advancement at Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, one of the first Indigenous-led CDCs in the country. Liz grew the organization’s budget from under $500,000 to over eight million in just four years.

Since 2018, Liz has continued to support leaders, organizations, and movements working to dismantle the systems and barriers that create inequities as the CEO of Emergence LLC. Through founding Emergence LLC, she has partnered with over 40 Indigenous led organizations to advance their missions through strategic advancement and fundraising, operations and infrastructure creation, and leadership development. Liz has supported the start up of 10 new Indigenous led nonprofit organizations over the last 5 years, many of which are thriving and seeing the impact of their work in their home communities already.

In her role, at NDN Collective Liz is helping to lead efforts to strengthen NDN’s advancement team to support building movement infrastructure for the years and decades ahead–creating systems, tools, and resources needed to impact communities and build Indigenous power.

Liz has earned her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Social Welfare and Justice from Marquette University, Master of Social Work, Community Organizing and Program Administration from the University of Southern California, and working towards a PhD in Leadership and Change from the Antioch University.