Tawanna is the Executive Director of the Northside Funders Group, a place-based, collective impact organization of 20 corporate, community and private foundations and public sector investors committed to aligning investments and strategies to catalyze comprehensive, sustainable change in North Minneapolis. In this role she facilitates a four-lever approach to helping funders Learn, Leverage, Influence and Invest in new ways that advance equity and build social capital and extend the prosperity of the Twin Cities to one of its most impoverished neighborhoods.
Before moving to Minnesota, Tawanna was the Director of Diversity for Cox Communications, where she served as an advisor to the senior management team, assisting in setting the highest standards for business growth, innovation and stakeholder return by ensuring that the company understood and acted upon the needs of diverse communities.
Prior to joining Cox, she served as the first Executive Director for Destination Midtown, leading an unprecedented community economic development public-private partnership. Her visionary leadership lead to more than $500 million of re-investment in the historic heart of Omaha in just three years, and also resulted in the development of a model that was later replicated in North and South Omaha.
Tawanna has a Bachelors Degree of Public Administration from Washburn University in Topeka, KS. She recently completed the Executive Certificate in Transformational Leadership from Georgetown University. In 2014 she was awarded a prestigious Bush Fellowship by the Bush Foundation to engage her transformational leadership toward creating systems that fully leverage and deploy black philanthropy and civic leadership as key differentiators in the battle for economic equity.
Tawanna’s civic leadership has been recognized by many awards including the Midlands Business Journal’s (Omaha) 40 Under 40 and in 2004 as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Omahan’s. And, in 2005 the Midlands Business Journal honored her as one of Omaha’s 40 under 40. And this year she was selected as a part of the Twin-Cities cohort for the inaugural Harvard Business School Young American Leaders Program on U.S. Economic Competitiveness. And, she was recently selected as one of Living Cities’ 25 Disruptive Leaders.
Tawanna has lent her leadership to over 30 non-profit and philanthropic boards over the last decade. Today she serves as a Trustee at the Women’s Foundation of Minnesota, President of the Minneapolis- St. Paul Chapter of The Links, Incorporated, Immediate Past-Co-Chair & Board Member of the African American Leadership Forum and as a member of the Hennepin County Penn Avenue Community Works Steering Committee.
Tawanna is married to Eric Black and has two children, Traviata (4) and Christian (3).