FCCF Welcomes New Team Members in Fall 2022

Fairfield County’s Community Foundation is delighted to welcome four new team members! Get to know Krista Carnes, Sara DeRose, Alexandra Ganim and Sarah Omotunde, who joined FCCF in October 2022.

Alexandra (Alli) Ganim joined Fairfield County’s Community Foundation in 2022 as a Program Associate.

In this role, Alli is responsible for providing programmatic and administrative support to the Education, Workforce, Housing, Income, and Asset-Building teams.

Prior to working at the Foundation, Alli worked for Bridgeport Hospital – Yale New Haven Health where she was a Clinical Social Worker in the Primary Care Clinic. She fostered key collaboration, communication, and outreach as a member of the medical team to provide patient-centered, trauma-informed, high-quality, comprehensive care. Alli assisted in co-authoring a grant renewal that secured $10,000 in funding for FY 2022-2023. These dollars were utilized to purchase and provide necessary baby items and supplies to low-income clinic patients and families.

Alli’s community work experience began at County Council for Young Children in New Jersey as an intern, where she partnered with municipalities, anchor institutions, and NGOs to begin and sustain grassroots initiatives. Her next roles included internships at other local New Jersey non-profits such as the Housing & Community Development Network of NJ and the Affordable Housing Alliance. At AHA, she took on a new endeavor as a grant writer, where she solidified over $30,000 in funding as well as established an inter-agency resource database that encompassed 9 counties in total. Locally, Alli served as a Case Manager in Permanent Supportive Housing at Alpha Community Services YMCA in Bridgeport. She provided crucial services to clients with chronic experiences of homelessness paired with co-occurring diagnoses of substance use and mental health disorders. She still maintains her network of connections and volunteers at the Annual Walk to End Homelessness.

Alli received both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Social Work with a concentration in Global Community Practice from Monmouth University.

Krista Carnes joined Fairfield County’s Community Foundation in 2022 as Communications Director.

In this role, Krista is responsible for developing and executing a comprehensive integrated strategy for carrying out FCCF’s communications efforts, ensuring alignment with our strategic mission.

Over the past 20 years, Krista’s career has been spent largely in marketing, communications, and content strategy roles for various agencies and across verticals including influencer marketing, experiential and educational marketing. Most recently, she headed up growth and development for SophieConnect, an online course program based at Sacred Heart Greenwich, which serves the network of Sacred Heart schools across North America.

Her earliest passion was the publishing industry, starting her career in author publicity primarily focused on securing and managing speaking engagements for experts and thought leaders in the fields of business, parenting, and psychology.

Krista received her bachelor’s degree in English with a written communications concentration from Roanoke College and a master’s degree in journalism and mass communication from the University of South Florida.

Sara DeRose joined the Community Foundation in 2022 as Philanthropic Advisor.

In this role, Sara works with our donors and fundholders to strengthen our community and expand our impact.

Before joining the Community Foundation, Sara began her career in the arts and culture sector of NYC, where she served as the Marketing and Communications Director for the Brooklyn Arts Council and as the Communications Manager for the Public Art Fund. Sara also worked as a consultant for several years during which time she had the opportunity to work with numerous nonprofit organizations including the National Council of Jewish Women, Choices in Childbirth, and Repair the World on projects ranging from strategic planning, communications planning, and fund development.

Most recently, Sara was the Development Officer at Person to Person focused on partnerships and donor engagement. Before that, she was the External Affairs Director for TMI Project where she headed up the fundraising and communications departments and oversaw the development of the organization’s new strategic plan, subsequent rebranding, website redesign, and new donor database and CRM implementation.

Sara holds a master’s degree in Public Policy & Non-Profit Management from The New School University and a bachelor’s degree from Fordham University. She is also a recent graduate of The Norwalk Leadership Institute, a professional development program administered by the Greater Norwalk Chamber of Commerce. Sara resides in Fairfield with her family.

Sarah Omotunde joined Fairfield County’s Community Foundation in 2022 as a Program Associate.

In this role, Sarah is responsible for providing programmatic and administrative support to the Fund for Women and Girls team.

Over the past few years, Sarah has worked as a Graduate Research Assistant and intern in Lowell, MA for the Center for Community Research and Engagement and The Lowell Community Health Center. Sarah led and facilitated Teen Block’s Violence Prevention Coalition, which included several youth-serving organizations in the Greater Lowell Community to improve youth services during the pandemic. She also conducted a Youth Needs Assessment Survey to evaluate youth needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in 100+ respondents. On the research side, she collaborated to create a webpage illustrating the benefits of focused deterrence in decreasing youth gang violence and created infographics and research briefs on various topics related to youth. She also analyzed pre-existing data from all youth-serving organizations under the Shannon Community Safety Initiative grant to evaluate changes and COVID-19 impact.

From 2015 – 2017, Sarah was an Ambassador for FCCF’s Thrive by 25 campaign where she assisted in the planning and creation of our large summit which engaged over 217 youth from Fairfield County. She supported the coordination of workshops that helped youth in applying for universities and job search readiness and she served on the Thrive Advisory Council. Sarah is passionate about mental health, education equity, youth wellbeing, and development as well as community improvement.

Sarah received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Sacred Heart University and her master’s degree in community social psychology from the University of Massachusetts Lowell.