Following an extensive nationwide search, we are excited to announce Soledad Adrianzén McGrath as the Joyce Foundation’s Program Director for the Gun Violence Prevention and Justice Reform Program. A nationally recognized attorney, researcher and policy expert, Soledad succeeds former Program Director and Senior Adviser Tim Daly and will lead a team advancing the Foundation’s three-pronged justice reform strategy on policing, system reform, and violence prevention. She starts in January 2026.
Soledad rejoins the Foundation from Northwestern University’s Center for Neighborhood Engaged Research & Science (CORNERS), where she served as executive director. Prior to Northwestern, Soledad was the Joyce Foundation’s Senior Program Officer for the Gun Violence Prevention and Justice Reform Program from 2018-2020. She also was a Program Officer with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Justice Reform program, contributing to a multidisciplinary justice reform initiative and leading efforts to reduce racial and ethnic disparities in the justice system.
Her extensive professional experience also includes serving as an associate director and chief counsel at the American Bar Association’s Justice Center and as co-chair of the Policing and Community Engagement subcommittee of the Partnership for Safe and Peaceful Communities, a Chicago-based violence prevention funder collaborative. Soledad began her legal career with Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP. Soledad earned her BA from Northwestern University and her JD from Emory University. She is originally from Lima, Perú.
About The Joyce Foundation
Joyce is a nonpartisan, private foundation that invests in evidence-informed public policies and strategies to advance racial equity and economic mobility for the next generation in the Great Lakes region.