Liz Welch, MSW
Founder & Principal , Emergence LLC
Interim Director of Advancement, NDN Collective
Liz has dedicated her professional life to shifting power and resources to community-driven organizations. Over the last decade, she has raised more than $90 million for Indigenous-led organizations across the country, advancing their work in culturally-grounded education, food sovereignty, economic development, and more. Her passion is supporting leaders and organizations grow their own capacity to confront unjust systems and accelerate community change.
Through a strong curiosity about the impact of large scale systems, Liz recognized early in her career that supporting community-led systems change is the way to building a more just world. From 2014 to 2019, she served as Director of Advancement at Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation, one of the first Indigenous-led CDCs in the country. Liz grew the organization’s budget from under $500,000 to over eight million in just four years and helped develop a groundbreaking model for replacing inequitable, colonial systems with Indigenous, community-based solutions.
Since 2018, Liz has continued to support leaders, organizations, and movements working to dismantle the systems and barriers that create inequities. Through founding Emergence LLC, she has partnered with over 40 Indigenous led organizations to advance their missions through strategic advancement and fundraising, operations and infrastructure creation, and leadership development. Liz has supported the start up of 10 new Indigenous led nonprofit organizations over the last 5 years, many of which are thriving and seeing the impact of their work in their home communities already.
While continuing to guide Emergence’s work, she also serves as Interim Director of Advancement at NDN Collective, an organization dedicated to building Indigenous peoples’ power. By the close of 2024, NDN will have provided close to $100 million in transformational grant support to more than 700 Indigenous-led organizations and leaders. In her role, Liz is helping to lead efforts to strengthen NDN’s advancement team to support building movement infrastructure for the years and decades ahead–creating systems, tools, and resources needed to impact communities and build Indigenous power.
Liz is also a mother of two boys. This continues to be a central component of how Liz sees her work in building a more justworld. The impacts of white supremacy impact climate change, education systems, and policies that will have a great impact on the next generation. Liz is working to build a world where her children are safe, think critically about the world around them, and are avid contributors to their communities and the solutions the world desperately needs all while fostering a fun and dynamic environment for them to grow up in.