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NUF Alumni, it’s time to reconnect. Join the NUF Alumni Advisory Board on Wednesday, October 28 from 7:30–8:30 p.m. ET f...
10/16/2026

NUF Alumni, it’s time to reconnect.

Join the NUF Alumni Advisory Board on Wednesday, October 28 from 7:30–8:30 p.m. ET for a Virtual Social Hour with Alumni across classes, communities, and career paths.

Catch up with familiar faces. Meet someone new. Celebrate what’s happening across our Alumni community. And hear a little about what’s ahead at NUF.

Whether we saw you recently or it’s been a while, there’s a place for you here.

Register today: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/79F_bNAGTdqONgI2BGT9yg #/registration

“I came back home. This is home.” For National Urban Fellows Alum Randy Lopez (Class of 2008), leadership is rooted in f...
10/15/2026

“I came back home. This is home.”

For National Urban Fellows Alum Randy Lopez (Class of 2008), leadership is rooted in family, heritage, and community.

The son of Mexican immigrants, Randy grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, where his parents taught him the importance of education, caring for others, and seeing community as an extension of family.

Through NUF, Randy expanded his perspective beyond Kansas City and gained experience in health philanthropy at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with mentorship from Dr. Debra Joy Pérez (Class of 1997). That experience helped shape how he would put his commitment to community into practice.

Today, as President and CEO of the Wyandotte Health Foundation, Randy leads investments that strengthen the health and well-being of the community that raised him.

Under his leadership, the Foundation has advanced Connect the Dottes, a community-informed roadmap for addressing childhood trauma, and partnered to expand access to flexible funding for grassroots organizations serving historically underserved communities.

Randy's experience at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the relationships he built through NUF expanded his understanding of how communities across the country address shared challenges. That national perspective, and the connections he continues to draw upon, remain valuable resources in his leadership today.

“If I’m facing issues here in Kansas City, I know we’re not the only community that’s faced them.”

In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month, we celebrate Randy's leadership and the lasting impact of investing in leaders who bring their experience, relationships, and commitment back to the communities they serve.

Randy's story reflects what's possible when local leadership is strengthened by national perspective and lasting connections.

10/05/2026

2026 Fellow Spotlight: Most of Tej Reddy’s cohort spent their Fellowships inside foundations and nonprofits. Tej went somewhere different, into the machinery of local government itself, where the promise and the risks of AI are already colliding in real time.

Mentored by Keisha Smith at DeKalb County, Georgia, his capstone, Governing Municipal AI Adoption, meets a challenge most institutions are only beginning to name: how governments can use AI to improve public services without compromising the privacy and security of the residents they serve. It maps how to capture AI’s benefits while building the guardrails to protect against its risks.

Tej leaves the Fellowship with the research, framework, and network to help governments get this right.

09/25/2026

2026 Fellow Spotlight: What happens when the systems built to help families end up penalizing them for getting ahead? Stephanie Ramirez Zarate has seen the answer up close. The “benefit cliff”—where earning one more dollar can mean losing the support a family depends on—is something she watched play out in her own home.

She brought that conviction to the National Urban Fellows. Mentored by Tyrone Hampton Jr. at Philadelphia Works, Stephanie turned the problem into an actionable plan: the Philadelphia Cliff Collaborative, which brings public, private, and nonprofit partners to the same table and taps philanthropy and existing block grants to build funding that sits outside the political fight. “When you take the funding out of the political conversation,” she shared, “that’s already a huge win.”

Her approach earned two of NUF’s highest honors: the Capstone Prize, awarded by Georgetown faculty and the NUF Star Award, recognizing excellence, engagement, and leadership growth across the full NUF experience. Stephanie leaves with a proven plan already being put to work.

Read more about Stephanie: https://nuf.org/fellow_post/stephanie-ramirez-zarate/

09/23/2026

2026 Fellow Spotlight: How do we make access to education non-negotiable? It’s a question Natalie Delille has carried for years and the reason she founded and leads Dear Society. After six years in nonprofit leadership, she came to the National Urban Fellows to pursue it with even greater reach.

Each Fellow spends the program researching a capstone—a real challenge facing the communities they serve. Mentored by Patrice Green at the Surdna Foundation, Natalie took on the divide between Haitian students and international higher education, and found just how wide it runs: data existed through 2025 for most countries, but for Haiti the last figures on record dated to 1986.

Natalie leaves the Fellowship with the research and relationships to keep closing that gap and carries it forward to her next chapter in China as a newly named Schwarzman Scholar. As she told the room at graduation, “People like me need to step in and change the narrative.”

Read more about Natalie: https://nuf.org/fellow_post/natalie-delille/

09/21/2026

2026 Fellow Spotlight: How do you measure the value of science whose payoff may be decades away? That’s the kind of question Rhea Elcock is drawn to. Trained as a mathematician and gifted with a poet’s ear, she was selected to open this year’s graduation ceremony with the class reflection.

Her capstone carried that rigor to a challenge many overlook: how philanthropy measures its own impact on basic science. Mentored by Roxanne Delaney at the Simons Foundation, Rhea studied how to evaluate the impact of philanthropic grants on basic science research and did what academia rarely allows: both measuring impact and putting that evaluation to work.

That work addressed a real gap in science philanthropy, and Rhea is carrying it forward: she is continuing with the Simons Foundation as an Impact and Evaluation Manager. As she shared from the stage, “For us to change the narrative of what science is and what it should be, we have to better understand how to measure it.”

Read more about Rhea: https://nuf.org/fellow_post/rhea-elcock/

09/18/2026

2026 Fellow Spotlight: Latinos represent a $4.1 trillion force in the U.S. economy and Eduardo Ramos believes cities like Philadelphia have only a narrow window to invest in that momentum. Making that case became his Fellowship work, but the roots run deeper: he took his first government job simply to help families like his own navigate things as basic as paying a bill or answering a code-enforcement notice.

Mentored by Claire Greenwood at the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia, Eduardo studied how Latino growth can advance economic mobility across the city, arguing that this momentum is an opportunity Philadelphia can’t afford to let slip to the surrounding region. As he shared, “The hardest discipline in leadership isn’t taking on more. It’s staying focused on the work that matters most.”

Eduardo leaves the Fellowship with the data, research, and network to make that case impossible to ignore.

Read more about Eduardo: https://nuf.org/fellow_post/eduardo-ramos/

09/16/2026

2026 Fellow Spotlight: Karla Reyes Diaz could have kept advising from the outside. Instead, she came to the National Urban Fellows to take a seat directly in community. The daughter of Dominican parents and raised in the South Bronx, she had already built a public-sector career spanning federal disaster recovery in Puerto Rico and Medicaid access in North Carolina.

Mentored by Talib Horne at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, her capstone took on one of the defining tensions of this moment—how communities recover and reinvest without repeating past harm—through the Baltimore Vacancy Reinvestment Initiative. As she told the room at graduation, “When you focus on the vacant lots, you stop seeing the homes and the families that were there before.”

Karla leaves the Fellowship as a member of the NUF Alumni network, carrying that community-centered lens back to New York and to Accenture, where she’ll consult on health care for Indigenous communities in Arizona.

Read more about Karla: https://nuf.org/fellow_post/karla-reyes-diaz/

09/14/2026

2026 Fellow Spotlight: Patrick Rodriguez first encountered the justice system as a young man. Years later, remaking that system has become his life’s work, from the justice movements of 2020 to the coalition tables of the National Urban League.

Mentored by Jerika Richardson at the National Urban League, Patrick used his Fellowship to take a comprehensive look at a system most people only try to reform piece by piece, earning a master’s in policy management along the way. His capstone reframes the debate entirely: the question, he argues, isn’t whether we punish someone for a crime, but “what the next opportunity to succeed can look like.”

The way he shows up for the work, and the people beside him, is why he was chosen for the Cohort Award; he was also named to Kennesaw State University’s 2026 40 Under 40. Patrick leaves the Fellowship with the research, credentials, and coalition to help transform the system.

Read more about Patrick: https://nuf.org/fellow_post/patrick-rodriguez/

Twenty-five years ago, an ordinary morning became a moment that forever changed our nation. On the 25th anniversary of S...
09/11/2026

Twenty-five years ago, an ordinary morning became a moment that forever changed our nation. On the 25th anniversary of September 11, we remember the lives lost, honor the extraordinary courage of first responders and everyday people who moved toward one another in a moment of unimaginable crisis, and hold close the families and communities whose lives were forever changed.

We also recognize that the impact of September 11 did not end that day. For survivors, responders, families, and those living with 9/11-related illnesses, its effects continue to be felt decades later. Their experiences remind us that remembrance also requires care, service, and a lasting commitment to the people and communities affected.

For more than 55 years, National Urban Fellows has prepared accomplished and courageous professionals to lead and serve their communities. At the heart of that work is a belief in leadership grounded in integrity, responsibility, and care for the people and institutions we are entrusted to serve.

Today, we remember. We honor those who served and sacrificed. And we remain committed to the kind of principled leadership that strengthens our institutions, earns public trust, and helps communities move forward together.

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