Saida Agostini-Bostic

President, Funders for LGBTQ Issues

Saida is a longtime cultural organizer, activist, and seasoned nonprofit leader. She has guided statewide advocacy efforts promoting the rights of LGBTQ youth in foster care, education, and juvenile justice, winning critical new protections, and directed national art actions uplifting the visibility of Black girls, women, and LGBTQ communities. Founder of the Rooted Collective, a gathering of Black LGBTQ healing justice activists in Baltimore, Saida is dedicated to building radical healing spaces that move us towards freedom.

She comes to Funders from YWCA USA, where she served as Vice President of Member Services, directing a department responsible for stewarding a national network of over two hundred local associations serving 2.3 million women and girls annually. Prior to YWCA USA, Saida was Chief Operating Officer for FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture, an artist collective dedicated to ending rape culture. During Saida’s tenure, she guided critical coalition building efforts to ensure the success of key organizational projects, most notably, the display of the Monument Quilt on the National Mall, a collection of over three thousand quilt squares crowdsourced from survivors over several years.

In November 2017, Saida was named a Movement Maker by the Move to End Violence, a program of the NoVo Foundation. A graduate Cave Canem Fellow, she has received honors for her art and activism from the Baltimore Sun, R.W. Deutsch Foundation, Leeway Foundation, and the Blue Mountain Center. She holds a Masters of Social Work from the University of Pennsylvania.