Homecoming With Purpose: LaToya Williams-Belfort Brings Her ‘Secret Sauce’ To The Bronx Community Foundation

By Janee Bolden

LaToya Williams-Belfort has spent her career building pathways for underserved communities, but stepping into her new leadership role as executive director of the Bronx Community Foundation has even deeper meaning for her as a Bronx native.

“It felt like a homecoming,” Williams-Belfort told BLACK ENTERPRISE. “Throughout my career, I’ve been really intentional and really blessed to do work for communities that I authentically understood, and then to bring people to the table to drive investment and solutions for those communities.”

Williams-Belfort was raised in the Bronx, and long before she had the language for systems and structures, she understood what it meant to live inside them. “Growing up in the Bronx, I quickly was able to start to understand systemic barriers,” she said. “It was very clear to me that my community, my family, were hardworking, God-fearing, family-oriented folks, but you would hear terms like, ‘we just can’t get a break’ or ‘we just don’t have access to certain opportunities.’”

Those early observations stayed with her as she moved through school, into the workforce, and eventually into philanthropy. Over time, they crystallized into a framework that would guide her leadership. “Ultimately landing on this word that’s been so important to my life — equity,” she said. “What does it mean having equitable opportunity? So many people think equity means equality. We know that those are two totally different things.”

By the time the country reached an inflection point following George Floyd’s death in 2020, Williams-Belfort had already spent years working inside philanthropy. What shifted then was her sense of urgency around solutions. “The country was talking about racism in a way that had never happened in my life,” she said. “But we were all talking about the problems and how we got here. The solutions conversation was where I really wanted to lean in.”

That desire to move from diagnosis to action led her to the nonprofit organization 15% Pledge, where she became the inaugural executive director. The goal was clear: use the machinery of capitalism to close opportunity gaps. “When we think about equitable opportunity, when we think about building wealth, when we think about the racial wealth gap in this umbrella of capitalism, what the pledge was doing as a release to creating scalable pathways for Black entrepreneurs felt like a tangible solution,” she said. “If we could help entrepreneurs to gain equitable access to the supply chains of billion-dollar corporations in a sustainable way and really build wealth, now we’re talking about a more inclusive economy.”

Under her leadership, the organization scaled rapidly. “I was there for almost five years,” she said. “We took the organization to a $7 million operating nonprofit, and we were able to scale $14 billion in impact for a community of over 10,000 Black businesses.” When the pledge launched, she noted that the community numbered closer to 1,000.

Still, as proud as she is of that work, Williams-Belfort saw its limits. Sustainable change required not just programs, but a capital strategy. That realization shaped her decision to step into her current role at the Bronx Community Foundation, which operates as a funding organization rather than a direct-service nonprofit.

“We don’t run direct programs,” she said. “It is a funding organization.” For Williams-Belfort, that distinction creates opportunity. “How are you supporting communities and nonprofits that are on the ground doing the work, but also thinking about sustainability, capacity building, and the technology needs to do the work in the right ways for the long term?”

The Foundation, she noted, is approaching its second decade. “The foundation is just about 10 years old,” she said. “They’ve been doing this in the right ways for a long time. But what is the next iteration of sustainability, growth, and innovation?”

Her answer is rooted in both data and lived experience. One of the greatest challenges she sees is not a lack of talent or effort in the Bronx, but a persistent narrative problem. “I think there’s just so much bias in thinking about what is possible for the Bronx,” she said. “Many people that I encounter have this 1970s, early ‘80s ideology, like the ‘Bronx is Burning’ type stereotypical understanding of what the Bronx is.”

She has encountered that bias firsthand. “I went to high school in Manhattan, and I would meet people, and they would say to me, ‘Well, you don’t seem like you’re from the Bronx,’” Williams-Belfort recalled. “And I’d be like, ‘What does that mean?’”

Those assumptions, she said, have real consequences. “When we think about investment and philanthropy and driving resources, it is in direct opposition of this bias about the Bronx that emanated from the 70s and 80s,” she said. “And that isn’t the landscape currently. I think there’s huge opportunity to create pathways for children, families, and for Bronxites.”

She sees signs of that shift everywhere, from cultural production to political momentum. “The young people in the Bronx are making things happen,” she said. “Even if you look at the recent mayoral election, Mamdani kicked off his campaign on Fordham Road. I think that’s intentional when you think about how the momentum is swirling around the borough.”

That momentum aligns with the Foundation’s strategy, which is built around collaboration rather than siloed giving. “One of the things I’m really excited about is this expansion of cross-industry partnership,” Williams-Belfort said. “My secret sauce is really bringing folks to the table to work in collaboration, to take a collective action approach in ways they wouldn’t have necessarily seen themselves working together.”

The Bronx, she believes, is uniquely positioned for that model. “Because of the Bronx’s history with music, art, and activism, I think it’s primed for continuing to work that way,” she said. “How do we bring together corporate stakeholders, elected officials, advocates, and traditional business folks, and give a renaissance to the Bronx’s resilience and creativity when we think about who and how we invest?”

The need, however, remains vast. Williams-Belfort points to the Foundation’s extensive listening process as a core strength. “The foundation has had over 1,000 community conversations,” she said. “Having that real data around the need is important.” From those conversations, four priority areas have emerged: digital equity, housing, healthcare, and economic stability.

“What we’re doing is thinking about how do we build out our participatory grant strategy to meet those needs in a very systematized, systemic way,” she said. Just as important is how the money moves. “Not just giving grants, but thinking about capacity building, sustainability, and how we’re working as a collective action unit.”

She is also focused on trust-based philanthropy and longer-term commitments. “Two-year grants, three-year grants,” she said. “Being able to get that long lead of support to really move the needle against some of these very deep and systems-level challenges.”

Though she has only been in the role for a few weeks, one moment already confirmed that Williams-Belfort is in the right place. “I had my fourth quarter in-person full-day board meeting,” she said. “It was a roll-up-your-sleeves day. We were asking hard questions. We were talking about participatory grantmaking, sustainability, and what the next 10 years look like. We’ve invested $15 million. How do we get to $50 million?” She left exhausted and energized. “I was calling my mentors and my village saying, ‘I had an amazing day, and I think this is going to be really awesome.’”

What grounds her, she said, is both experience and family. “There’s the head piece,” she said, referencing decades of nonprofit leadership. “But the heart part of it is my two sons, both born in the Bronx.” She wants the future she is building to be tangible for them. “I want them and young people like them to have equitable opportunity, to create a life that feels joyful and allows them to thrive.”

When she looks ahead five years, success is measurable and deeply human. “It’s all in the data, it’s all in the numbers,” Williams-Belfort said. “If we can be at a $25 million marker, if we can touch 50,000, 100,000 Bronxites, I would feel like a job well done.” But just as important is the story people tell about the borough. “If we can debunk this idea of the ‘Bronx is Burning’ and reframe that narrative to the Bronx as a place of collective action, community power, and investment, then we’re doing the right things.”

For Williams-Belfort, the work has come full circle. The child who once heard her community described as lacking is now leading an effort to prove otherwise with strategy, capital, and an unwavering belief that the Bronx’s future can be defined by opportunity, not stereotype.