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Ellen Friedman serves as Executive Vice President of Tides, where she has worked since 1987. In that role, she is responsible for organizational operations and integrated management of the Tides organizations. Ellen also serves as Managing Director of the Community Clinics Initiative, a partnership with The California Endowment working to strengthen community health centers throughout California.
Ellen brings a long history of advising individual donors on issues of philanthropic planning, violence against women, the Jewish community, and environmental issues. While at Tides she has designed grant programs and initiatives on issues ranging from environmental sustainability in the West, homeless prevention strategies, and rebuilding communities in post-conflict regions of the world to health equity, technology, and LGBT issues. She has worked on policy related to health information technology and domestic violence issues at the local, state, and national levels.
Before coming to Tides, Ellen served as a program officer at the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation in Los Angeles, where she focused and published on topics including K-12 public education, runaway youth, domestic violence, and spirituality and philanthropy. Previous to the Hilton Foundation, Ellen was Executive Director of Sojourn Shelter, one of the first shelters for battered women and their children in Los Angeles.
Ellen is a board member of the 3 Guineas Fund, as well as the Family Violence Prevention Fund, where she was Founding Board Chair from 1987 to 1992. For the past five years she has also served as Board Treasurer for the New Field Foundation. She is also an advisory board member of Mesa Refuge, a retreat for environmental writers. Previously, Ellen served on the boards of Presidio Hill School, Women in Philanthropy and Jewish Funders Network.
Ellen holds an MBA in nonprofit management from UCLA.
