Marcella J Tillett

Marcella J Tillett, LMSW is an innovative and justice-centered philanthropy and nonprofit executive, sought after speaker and trusted thought leader, with over 20 years of leadership, executive management and administration, program design and development, strategic planning, fundraising and grant management experience. Her work has been guided by a personal north star of creating a just world where all people can experience freedom and thrive, realizing that vision with and for other oppressed peoples, working through an intersectional racial, gender, social justice, community-centered framework.

Marcella currently serves as Senior Advisor, focused on strategic and philanthropic partnerships, to the Commissioner of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She has provided senior executive leadership at the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City as Executive Director, Brooklyn Community Foundation as Vice President of Programs and Planned Parenthood of New York City as Vice President of Project Street, which has led to meaningful organization- and sector-level changes. City & State named Marcella one of the ‘2023 Nonprofit Power 100’, ‘2022 Above & Beyond’ (Recognizing 50 remarkable women who are improving New York), and in 2021, ‘Community Engagement Power 50’. Additionally, in 2009, she was awarded the Emerging Social Work Leader Award by the NYC chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. Marcella has served on a number of boards and committees including Nonprofit Finance Fund’s Capital Advancing Racial Equity Fund Advisory Group, National Association of Social Workers, NYC Chapter Board of Directors, NYC Sexual and Reproductive Justice Community Engagement Group, and NYC HIV Prevention Planning Group, among others.

Marcella holds a Bachelors of Social Work from Clark Atlanta University and a Master's of Science in Social Work from Columbia University (Class of 2003), where she serves as a Senior Lecturer, teaching ‘Decolonizing Social Work Practice’ and 'Macro Advocacy in Social Work Practice', which trains graduate social work students skills in anti-oppressive interventions guided by Critical Race Theory, Radical Pedagogy, and Black Liberation Theory.

Marcella has resided in Brooklyn, NY for over 20 years.