Tonia Wellons

PRESIDENT AND CEO

Tonia Wellons is the President & CEO of the Greater Washington Community Foundation, the largest public foundation in the region with over $500 million in assets and $80 million in annual grants. With deep community development experience, Tonia leads a regional foundation with a 50-year history of mobilizing community resources and investing more than $1.7 billion to build equitable, just, and thriving communities.

Since being named CEO in April 2020, Tonia has worked with the Board of Trustees and staff to reimagine the strategic priorities of The Community Foundation to center racial equity and inclusion. Under her leadership, The Community Foundation developed a bold 10-year strategic vision that will leverage its resources and expertise to lead this community in addressing the most catalytic opportunity of our lifetimes: closing our region’s racial wealth gap. Together, we have the privilege to do the difficult but essential work of identifying the most promising ways to make progress toward closing the gap and mobilizing resources to make it happen.

Named the Washington Business Journal’s 2020 Nonprofit Leader of the Year, Tonia was recognized for leading the region’s largest coordinated COVID-19 philanthropic response fund, working closely with regional foundation partners and local government advisers. With a focus on speed, equity, and impact, this effort rapidly raised and deployed over $11 million in critical resources to help stabilize 300 nonprofits, more than half of which were led by people of color, so they could support community members struggling due to the public health and economic crisis.

Previously as VP of Community Investment, Tonia successfully launched several key initiatives at The Community Foundation, including VoicesDMV, the Resilience Fund, and the Partnership to End Homelessness.

Tonia has more than 20 years of experience in public and private partnerships, financial access and inclusion, and international development. Prior to joining The Community Foundation, she served as a political appointee for the Obama Administration as head of global partnerships at the Peace Corps. Tonia was responsible for leading the agency’s relationships with other federal agencies, the private sector, international NGOs, and donors. Most notably, Tonia led bold cause-marketing partnerships at the Peace Corps for Let Girls Learn (an initiative of First Lady Michelle Obama). Tonia previously served as fund manager of a multi-donor initiative focused on financial access and inclusion at the World Bank Group. She also spent a significant part of her career working on USAID-funded capacity development initiatives during the immediate post-apartheid era in South Africa and the broader sub-Sahara region.

Tonia serves on the board of Leadership Greater Washington, Words Beats & Life, CFLeads, and Bishop McNamara High School and sits on the Board of Visitors for Howard University’s School of Education. She is a member of the Federal City Council, DC Interagency Council on Homelessness, and The Economic Club of Washington DC. She has been recognized by Washingtonian Magazine as one of the 2023 Most Powerful Women in Washington and by the Washington Business Journal as one of the 2023 Women Who Mean Business.

Tonia is a 20+ year resident of Prince George's County and a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. She has a master’s degree in Public Administration and International Development Policy from the University of Delaware, and a bachelor’s in Political Science from North Carolina A&T State University.