dana bourland

Concerned citizen, Environmentalist, Philanthropist, World traveler

Dana has led transformative work across philanthropy, affordable housing, and environmental justice designing how capital flows, policies are shaped, and systems are reimagined to serve both people and planet. Dana most recently served as Senior Vice President for Environment and Strategic Initiatives at The JPB Foundation, where she built and led a $1 billion philanthropic portfolio focused on decarbonizing the built environment, advancing environmental justice, and resourcing grassroots leadership. Under her leadership, the foundation’s Environment Program deployed over $185 million in 2023 alone, scaling community-driven climate solutions across the country. She launched bold initiatives that unlocked more than $800 million in public and utility dollars for energy retrofits in low-income housing and created the Fund to Build Grassroots Power, which awarded $25 million to 137 organizations, 87% led by Black, Indigenous, and people of color, and 77% by women, trans, and nonbinary leaders. A lifelong systems thinker and strategist, Dana is known for pushing philanthropy beyond its comfort zone. She led JPB’s emergency response efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping direct $119 million in rapid-response grants. She recruited and mentored a high-performing team, built collaborative structures across programs, and redefined what risk-tolerant, equity-rooted giving could look like. In 2023, she was honored by her peers with the Environmental Grantmakers Association’s inaugural Risk Taker Award, recognizing her team's bold leadership in aligning racial equity with environmental funding strategies. Before her philanthropic leadership, Dana served as Vice President for Green Initiatives at Enterprise Community Partners, where she oversaw every facet of the multi-dimensional Green Communities campaign meeting the five-year goal of investing $550 million to green 8,500 homes in less than four years. Dana co-created the Green Communities Criteria, the first national green building standards for affordable housing. Today, those criteria are used by over 30 states and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and have contributed to the creation of more than 180,000 green affordable homes. She also co-founded the voluntary Green Communities Offset Fund, the first of its kind to generate and sell carbon offsets from housing retrofits, an innovative intersection of climate finance and social equity. Dana’s early work in public planning and global development laid the groundwork for her cross-sector leadership. At the Maryland Department of Planning, she helped draft Smart Growth legislation and advised the state legislature on infrastructure equity. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in Belize, she gained firsthand insight into how communities shape, sustain, and are sustained by their environments a lens that continues to guide her work today. She is the author of Gray to Green: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises (Island Press), a powerful argument for why housing must be central to any effective climate solution. Dana’s work has been featured in The Economist, Fast Company, Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Stanford Social Innovation Review, and she is a regular speaker at the intersection of climate, equity, and systems change. Dana holds a Master of Planning from the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota, and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Studio Art from Kalamazoo College. She has completed executive education at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Graduate School of Design, and MIT Sloan School of Management, with a focus on financial stewardship, real estate leadership, and navigating complexity in rapidly changing systems. Now, Dana is channeling her decades of experience into Soils and Vessels, a new initiative that blends land reunion, ecological restoration, and art to heal our collective relationship with Earth. Through this work, she asks deeper questions about belonging, repair, and what it means to live in right relationship with the land, and with one another. Whether moving billions in capital or shaping vessels from wild clay, Dana’s mission remains the same: to create the conditions for a just, and thriving planet for all.

affordable housing, climate solutions, impact investing, land reunion, sustainable development