The Curve Foundation welcomes Jasmine Sudarkasa as its founding Executive Director. In this role, Jasmine will lead and manage all aspects of The Curve Foundation and accomplish its mission with input from the foundation’s founders and Advisory Council.
“Jasmine is a committed activist across multiple social justice movements,” says Curve Foundation co-founder Jen Rainin. “Her deep understanding and effective, authentic expression of values coupled with a genuine sense of humility gives me confidence that she will do an amazing job of bringing the community in, listening to and engaging stakeholders, and representing the foundation.”
Prior to joining Curve, Jasmine served as the program Fellow for the Effective Philanthropy Group at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In this role, she supported the foundation’s five-pillared approach to effective philanthropy, consulting with program staff on grantmaking strategy and evaluation, organizational effectiveness and equitable practice. In 2020, she designed and led a $15 million anti-racist grantmaking effort, a personal and career highlight.
“The stories of lesbian, queer and trans women, and non-binary people, are so often told as singular narratives of grief. Curve Magazine created a space where lesbian and queer history stood alongside the ordinary joys of our community, and both were celebrated in high-definition,” says Ms. Sudarkasa. “At the Curve Foundation, I look forward to the continued opportunity to highlight the ‘ordinary joy’ and extraordinary leadership of this community, and to creating new opportunities for the meaningful, cross-generational and cross-cultural conversations that began on the pages of the magazine.”
Jasmine has been a capacity builder, development officer, trainer and cheese monger – sometimes all at once. Before philanthropy, she served as a senior trainer on behalf of Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS), subject agency of the film Very Young Girls. In that role, Jasmine led a national training and technical assistance program on best practices for identifying and serving commercially sexually exploited and domestically sex-trafficked youth. Notable participants include the Dallas County Juvenile Department and the Miami State Attorney’s Office.
As Executive Director, Jasmine will oversee the foundation’s initial programs, including the Curve Award for Emerging Journalists and the Curve Archive. In partnership with NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists, the Curve Award will recognize and support emerging journalistic writers who are focused on raising the visibility of LGBTQ+ women by telling their stories and elevating their voices. The Curve Archive, being built at curvemag.com, will be a permanent and searchable archive of the existing 30 years of the iconic Curve magazine issues that document the history and historic voices of the lesbian movement. There is no other existing resource that so fully documents queer women’s past and present.
