Deidre Thomas is a philanthropy, nonprofit, and social impact leader. For nearly 15 years, she has worked in organizational development, systems change, equity, nonprofit management, and philanthropy. She has also been an after-school program manager, grants director, and consultant to nonprofits, private foundations, and corporate social responsibility teams.
Deidre has planned, designed, and facilitated training and strategic planning processes with practitioners, leaders, staff, community members, advocates, and boards nationally. Her skills include equity-driven change process, design and facilitation, cross-sector field-building, strategy development and strategic planning, equity assessments, qualitative and quantitative research and analysis, and visioning. Deidre supports nonprofit, corporate, and government clients with equity, change management processes, program evaluation, and design and enjoys bringing together theory and real-world practice to identify the best solutions.
Before her work in consulting, she served as the Director of Grants at the Houston Arts Alliance, where she led efforts to transform the grantmaking strategies to the arts and culture sector on behalf of the City of Houston. Her work focused on continuous improvement, a listening and learning culture, transparency, and philanthropic equity. She worked with various stakeholder groups to inform, develop, and implement strategies, policies, processes, and special initiatives to support, shape, serve, and lead the cultural landscape in the nation's most diverse city. Significantly, Deidre managed the City of Houston 2019 contract renewal contract worth $128+ million to inject over 1 billion over five years into the creative economy.
Throughout her tenure at Houston Arts Alliance, Deidre also developed crisis response plans and initiatives following the devasting impacts of Hurricane Harvey and the COVID-19 global pandemics on the arts and cultural community. These responses included working collaboratively with stakeholders to develop advocacy and case statements backed by analysis and distribution models to win allocations from the City of Houston CARE's funding, resulting in $5 million to 538 individual artists' fiscally sponsored projects and nonprofits that reside in the City of Houston.
Deidre earned a BA in Sociology, a certificate in Nonprofit Management, and a minor in African American Studies from the University of Houston. She also received a certificate in Nonprofit Finance from Rice University. Deidre is an active Board Member of several organizations, including BIPOC Arts Network Fund, Gulf Coast Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Midtown Theater Arts Center Houston, and Blaffer. When she's not working with changemakers, you can find Deidre biking, pilates, reading, or exploring art.