Anita Gundanna

Anita Gundanna joined CACF as Co-Executive Director in April 2017. She has worked throughout her career to prevent and address violence against women and children, and to promote healthy families, primarily in minority and immigrant communities of New York City. Prior to her return to the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families (CACF), Anita worked as a consultant with a number of small and growing community-based non-profit organizations mostly serving Asian American and immigrant communities.

Anita holds a PhD from Columbia University School of Social Work. She conducts research on organizations, social movements, and coalition-building. She teaches program evaluation and advocacy to students in the master’s degree program in the schools of social work and public affairs. She also gives seminars on program design, program evaluation, and theories of change for member organizations of CACF and FPWA in New York City.

From 2007-2010, Anita was Deputy Director at the Fund for Social Change (FSC) where she created and coordinated a number of donor-community collaborations and strategic alliances to affect positive change in New York City’s child welfare system. She was also Program Officer for the Child Welfare Fund and managed the foundation’s portfolio of grantees.

From 2004-2007, Anita served as Director of Client Services at Womankind (formerly the New York Asian Women’s Center), where she managed the agency’s residential and community-based services assisting women and child victims of domestic violence. While there she developed Project Free, a program serving victims of human trafficking.

Anita also worked at CACF from 2001 – 2004 in child welfare policy advocacy for New York City’s Asian American and immigrant communities. Anita holds a BS in Psychology and an Elementary School Teaching Certification from Duke University, and an MS and PhD in Social Work from Columbia University. She lives with her family in South Orange, NJ.