Two new hires join program & community engagement team

The Arizona Community Foundation is pleased to announce Nicolas de la Fuente has joined its program and community engagement team as a Community Program Officer, specializing in place-based initiatives, part-time, on September 26,. He will begin full-time on November 1.

Nicolas de la Fuente collaborates with diverse leaders and stakeholders on issues such as food security and comprehensive community wellbeing to further ACF’s impact across Arizona. De la Fuente works across the organization to align grantmaking with programs, initiatives, and donor engagement strategies.

De la Fuente came to ACF from Neuro Strategies, which he founded in 2021. His work at Neuro Strategies included collaborating with the TigerMountain Foundation to manage the Phoenix-based Nina Mason Pulliam Audubon Center along the Rio Salado. He provided consulting expertise for the Arizona Economic Recovery Center, an initiative of Local First Arizona, and launched the first outdoor summit on climate change working with the city of Phoenix, Roosevelt School District, community leaders, and seven leading grassroots and policy nonprofit organizations. He was also the Co-Founder and Director of Spaces of Opportunity, a 19-acre urban agriculture and community wellness project in South Phoenix.

De la Fuente holds a bachelor’s degree in Anthropology with a minor in Latin American Studies from San Diego State University and a Master’s in Human Rights Research: US Foreign Policy in Latin America from Arizona State University, and spent two years working on food security issues in Guatemala with the U.S. Peace Corps.