Nina Revoyr heads the Los Angeles office of Ballmer Group, the philanthropy founded by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife, Connie, in 2015. As we recently wrote, in that short time, Ballmer Group has become a leading antipoverty funder in L.A. county through its local office. The funder also has offices in Detroit and Washington State, funds national antipoverty efforts, and has a separate data team.
Here in L.A., Revoyr has hired a team of a half-dozen people, drawn from the community. She brings to her role a unique perspective as a Japanese-American and the author of six critically acclaimed novels about diverse Los Angeles communities. Her books Include “Southland,” which was recently chosen by the Los Angeles Times as one of 110 essential books about L.A.) IP caught up with Revoyr to learn more about her work at Ballmer Group.
Your books and your work at Ballmer are both very much focused on L.A.’s cultural diversity and the challenges faced by low-income communities and communities of color in particular. How did you come to that as your focus or passion?
I did not grow up in privilege. I was raised by a single dad, with blue collar folks on both sides of my family. I was born in Japan, lived there for a few years, then moved to rural Wisconsin where my family there was factory workers—meat slaughtering plant, shoe factory. I moved to L.A. when I was nine, with my dad, to Culver City, which was pretty gritty then. I grew up in a neighborhood that had some challenges, some gang activity, low-income folks dealing with issues that low-income folks face: housing, parents who were incarcerated. It was also very multiracial, super-diverse. I remember it as being mostly Black, Latino, Asian, Japanese and kids from Vietnamese refugee families, and white, largely Jewish. That really formed my world view.
Writing is very time-consuming. How have you managed to work full time in these demanding and engaging jobs and also publish novels?
I’ve always had these parallel careers, starting from right out of college. I always wanted to be a writer and I always wanted to do work that would have a tangible effect on communities. I taught in Japan, then came back and worked in Watts for Head Start for low-income kids. That was my first exposure to the nonprofit world. I was an immigrant and I certainly faced racism in Wisconsin, but it was far worse for my Black friends. I wanted to make sure, coming out of college, for the next generation of kids like my friends, they would have different kinds of opportunities.
But you know, I don’t have any kids, and I think that gives me more time than parents have.
Oh yes, if I didn’t have my one now-teenage child, I would have published six novels by now and worked full time, too. Definitely. How has being raised by a single dad influenced your work?
I had one parent, but a very solid parent. I had a solid dad, and I saw the difficulties that he had, going to schools and people asking for the mother, wanting to know where the mother was. It gave me a deep appreciation for the importance of dads and of men and a real desire to support their development and their efforts to be involved fathers. So that’s been an important part of the work I’ve done.
In a recent article IP published on Ballmer Group, you talked a lot about the value of hiring grantmakers who come from the nonprofit world and are deeply embedded in the community. How have you found these kinds of people to hire?
In some cases, they were people I saw in their old roles and was impressed by and then recruited. For example, the early childhood person — Kim Pattillo Brownson — she and I had served together for a year on a state task force on ending child poverty. I was aware of her work in L.A. County and saw her in action. That made me think she would be terrific. For each one of my team members, I have a story like that. But now, we are big enough and moving into subject areas I don’t know as well, so we are doing searches. My executive assistant, Shamira Brown, we found that way. She’s a Girl Scouts leader and leads groups in her church. I like that she’s shown involvement and leadership in other parts of her life.
How does your staff work with the other offices and the national and data teams?
Ballmer Group writ large is not very big. We have about 45 people across all the teams, including national and data. We all work really closely together. There’s a lot of cross pollination and partnership. For example, Washington has done some great work in early childhood around workforce. We are developing similar work in L.A. We have funded some efforts in L.A. for violence interrupters, people who are credible in the community, who might have been involved in gangs earlier in their lives but are not active now. Now, we’re funding national efforts around community violence intervention. It’s totally work we learned from in L.A. and are now supporting in a number of cities across the country. This is work I’m really excited about. We see safety as foundational to economic mobility.
As a not-so-recent transplant to L.A. from New York City, I am constantly amazed not only by how diverse L.A. is, but also by how much interaction there is among people from different countries, different races and different ages. While the scale of L.A. can impede programs, how does this diversity benefit your work as a funder?
Seeing a Black-led group in South L.A. working with a Latino-led group in Boyle Heights and an Asian-led group in Long Beach on youth justice reform — that is magic. That is the kind of very intentional partnership that is special to L.A.. To be able to build on the strengths of folks coming together from different parts of the county to work on a common issue, that is amazing. It happens in youth justice, education. These communities have different challenges, but there is a special power when they come together to work together on these issues. I feel so lucky to be able to work here and do this job. Part of the joy is watching these tremendous leaders tackle some of these huge issues and learn from them. It has been a challenging few years, and folks really rose up in heroic ways.
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