Edwin Torres Email & Phone Number

New York, Ny

Grantmakers in the Arts is the only national association of both public and private arts and culture funders in the US, including independent and family foundations, public agencies, community foundations, corporate philanthropies, nonprofit regrantors, and national service organizations – funders of all shapes and sizes across the US and into Canada. GIA provides valuable professional development for arts grantmakers through conferences, workshops, and webinars; publications including the peer-reviewed GIA Reader; research and policy work across the field of philanthropy; and communication tools on our website.

New York City

I served as Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of New York through Mayor de Blasio's first term. The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs is the largest local public cultural funding agency in the nation. I led the agency’s work cultivating and celebrating diversity, inclusion and equity; supporting our neighborhoods’ integration of the creative community into community development efforts; and fostering collaborations with other agencies. I led such projects as the development of a chapter of the city's long-term sustainability plan; the redesign of our capacity-building program to serve cohorts of cultural stakeholders in low-income communities; the survey of the diversity of our city's cultural workforce; the development of the CUNY Cultural Corps and the development of the first cultural plan for New York City.

During my five years at The Rockefeller Foundation, I served as program officer of the NYC Opportunities Fund as well as serving as a thought-partner and grantmaker on national portfolios focused on jobs-access and resilience. During that time, our grantmaking helped make New York a nationally-recognized leader in wage-theft prevention; helped prevent the evictions of hundreds of public housing residents; helped place hundreds of low-income residents in jobs; and advanced paradigmatic change such as the collective impact approach for homelessness-prevention and crime-reduction. I have also held positions at Parsons the New School for Design; at The Ford Foundation; and at the Bronx Council on the Arts. I hold a Master of Arts in Art History from Hunter College and a Master of Science in Management from The New School.

Ms, Organizational Change Management

Master Of Arts (M.A.), Art History