It looks after charitable money, but its real product is judgment: where Boston’s needs are sharpest, which local groups can respond, and how grants, research and policy can work together. In fiscal 2025, that judgment helped move $255 million through 12,472 grants.
Elizabeth Clay Roy is the CEO of Generation Citizen, a national nonprofit that partners with schools to teach 6th-12th graders Action Civics - hands-on, project-based democracy. A Columbia-trained urban studies graduate who campaigned door to door in Boston before she could vote, she has built a career across grassroots organizing, government, and economic-mobility work, from co-authoring an urban planning guidebook in Bangalore to co-creating the Opportunity Index and leading TakeRoot Justice in New York. She frames her work through 'critical patriotism' and insists young people are 'partners and problem-solvers, not citizens in waiting.'