Sylia Obagi is the founding Executive Director of the Winston Family Foundation. She is leading the creation of the “Project One Health” Initiative, a place-based, cross-sector partnership dedicated to the interconnectedness of human, environmental, and wildlife health.
She is positioning the Foundation as a convener, change-agent, and lead funder, investing $15M in Jacksonville, Florida and North Carolina, over three years to scale a nationally replicable model to advance child and youth wellbeing, protect ecosystems, and promote biodiversity. Sylia has guided the giving strategies of several high-profile, high-net-worth families and held leadership executive roles with various family foundations, most recently with the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.
As Vice President of Finance and Operations for the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, she was part of the executive leadership team of the Foundation and the Blank Family of Businesses. She was responsible for building the organization’s capacity to fulfill Mr. Blank’s Giving Pledge and bringing financial rigor to ensure the Foundation’s most significant grant investments would achieve its goals. As the founding president and CEO of the Roy and Patricia Disney Foundation, Sylia worked closely with the 25-member board to create one of the most progressive multi-generation family foundations, investing $12.5M in grants to support the most marginalized populations through a social, economic, and environmental justice lens across the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Before joining the Blank Family Foundation, Sylia led the Generative Group, a consulting firm dedicated to helping grantmakers turn charitable giving into social impact. She served as the Chief Strategy Officer for various family foundations. She worked with families as an architect and builder of their philanthropic institutions and strategies grounded in their values and aspirations as impactful changemakers in their field.
In addition, she focused on strengthening the sector by co-creating the Think Money First! Program - an innovative, experiential training for grantmakers to align their practices and due diligence process to support high-performing grantees. Prior to Disney, Sylia was the Chief Operating Officer at the Annenberg Foundation for eight years, during which she established the Foundation’s Los Angeles headquarters, grew staff from 13 to 90 people, designed their VISION+ responsive grantmaking program, launched the Annenberg Space for Photography, and created the largest capacity building program in the nation – Annenberg Alchemy – training over 2,000 nonprofit CEOs and board chairs in nonprofit sustainability, and the program continues through today.
Sylia began her career as a CPA at Arthur Anderson. She has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA in Marketing and Strategy and graduated Manga Cum Laude in Business Administration and Accounting at California State University, Northridge as an undergrad. She is a governance, executive, and change-management coach, accredited by BoardSource, the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and Robert Gass’s Social Transformation Project.