Erica Teasley Linnick

February 2022 - Bridge Partners is pleased to announce the appointment of Erica Teasley Linnick as Head of the State Infrastructure Fund (SIF) at NEO Philanthropy. 

Erica was most recently Senior Program Officer, then acting Director of Democracy, at Open Society Foundations. There she lead multi-million-dollar, non-partisan grantmaking for voting rights, election reform, legal empowerment and power-building in BIPOC communities. 

Before that, she had a distinguished career in nonprofit impact litigation as a board member and chair emeritus of The Impact Fund in Berkeley, CA; coordinator at the African American Redistricting Collaborative (AARC) in Los Angeles, where she developed fair districts strategy for California’s African American community; and Western Regional Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, focusing on civil rights litigation, and public education and legislative advocacy in areas of political participation, employment and police reform. 

Erica assumes leadership of SIF after a period of dramatic achievement and evolving funding strategies in civic engagement work. In the 2020 election period alone, SIF, a non-partisan 501(c)(3) collaborative fund, awarded $56 million to 140 organizations in 17 states. The number of African Americans eligible to vote in a presidential election hit a record 30 million, playing a major role in determining election results in AZ, GA, MI, PA and WI. Similar gains in the percentages of Latinos and youth voters were also achieved. 

“Erica has a wealth of experience as a respected leader in the philanthropic space in the fields of civil rights, civic engagement and voter suppression,” said Michele Lord, president of NEO Philanthropy, which houses SIF. “Her deep issue expertise and knowledge of the movement and groups on the ground; her strong advocacy for diversifying the base of grantees; her skills as a manager and supporter of staff members in their growth; and her deep connections to funders and their potential to expand the support of democracy work at a time when the pillars of democracy itself, such as elections integrity and voter rights, are threatened – all that combined means she’s the right choice for SIF as it moves into its next period of expansion and growth.”