There are people who do their work, and then there are people who shape the work—who leave something stronger, more just, and more human than what they first encountered. Celia Cudiamat has been that kind of leader for the Inland Empire Community Foundation.
This month, IECF celebrates Celia as she retires after 21 years as Chief Impact Officer. In that role, she’s overseen the distribution of scholarships to students and grants to the nonprofits and communities whose work addresses health and human services, advances education, economic opportunity, and equity across Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.
The numbers tell an impressive story. When Celia first sat down at her desk in 2004, IECF’s grantmaking budget was around $2 million. Compare that to 2024, when our grantmaking totaled more than $29 million. In a little over two decades, Celia and her team have facilitated nearly a quarter of a billion dollars of investments back into the people and places that make Riverside and San Bernardino Counties what they are.
Before the Foundation
Celia’s journey began long before she ever stepped into the Foundation.
Her family came to the United States from the Philippines during a time of political upheaval, searching for stability and opportunity. Like so many immigrant families, they carried with them both sacrifice and hope. Her mother, a nurse, came first—called to serve in a VA hospital—and soon after, the rest of the family followed, building a life together in Hollywood. Celia grew up navigating two worlds—the traditions and values of her Filipino home, and the expectations of American life. And like many who walk that path, she learned early how to listen, how to adapt, and how to carry others with her.
A UCLA graduate, she built her early career in community service at the university, directing the Bruin Corps AmeriCorps program, managing a VISTA program, and serving as advisor to the Program Activities Board, where students made grant decisions for campus and community initiatives. By the time she arrived at IECF, Celia had spent years working alongside students, immigrant families, and communities of color, and she brought that experience directly into her approach to philanthropy.
Community at the Center
Distributing grants and scholarships is the core of our work, and Celia has always been focused on who has a seat at the table when those decisions are made. She pushed for participatory grantmaking processes and brought community members into funding decisions. Her consistent question was whether the Foundation’s programs were reaching people with the least access to power and resources. She believed that effective philanthropy also means building trust with the organizations doing the work and using the Foundation’s standing in the region to push for equity in ways that outlast any single grant. That conviction shaped her work for 21 years, and the culture of IECF along with it.
From 2019 to 2021, Celia served as chair of the IE Funders Alliance, a network of private and public funders working to direct outside investment into Riverside and San Bernardino Counties and she helped shift not just funding, but perception—bringing attention and investment to a place too often overlooked.
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Giving Youth a Seat at the Table
One of Celia’s most powerful contributions has been her belief in young people, certainly as future leaders, and more importantly, as leaders right now.
In 2008, Celia helped launch the Youth Grantmakers Program, starting in Riverside and expanding to Coachella Valley, San Bernardino, Idyllwild, and a dedicated Native American cohort. The program places high school students in the role of grantmakers, giving them the tools to evaluate applications, deliberate as a group, and direct funding to causes their own communities identified as urgent. The idea came from then-board member Stan Grube. Celia remembers the conversation vividly:
“Stan came back from a conference completely energized. He said we needed to do something like what he’d seen in Michigan, and because of my background at UCLA, I knew we could. I just told him, ‘Stan, tell me what you want — high school, college, what?’ And Youth Grantmakers was born.”
Across all its cohorts, the Youth Grantmakers program has awarded more than $580,000 to community causes since 2008. For the students involved, it’s often the first time they’ve evaluated real applications, built consensus with peers, and directed actual money to causes they care about. The experience of handling a donor’s trust and their funding is building a generation of leaders who will look around, see a need, and work to meet it. An additional valuable and lasting benefit is that they carry forward new knowledge that sticks: their voice matters, their judgment matters, and they have the power to shape the world around them.
Connecting Donors to Community
One of the milestones Celia considers foundational to IECF’s growth is the Desert Legacy Fund, which supported graduate students doing field research in conservation and open space, as well as nonprofits working in the environmental sector. Running alongside it was an environmental initiative launched in partnership with Bank of America.
“That initiative was one of those signature programs that really broadened the scope of what the Community Foundation was doing at the time, because it was all in the environmental space. I think that was pretty much a seminal moment for the Foundation.” – Celia Cudiamat
The conservation focus also helped pave the way for one of IECF’s most significant philanthropic relationships. The S.L. Gimbel Fund opened a donor advised fund (DAF) with IECF in 2010, with conservation and open space among its key interest areas. Celia describes the art of cultivating that type of relationship as a kind of matchmaking.
“It’s all about listening to the donors. You try to help guide them in a direction that fulfills their passion, and when you see that connection happen, that’s where you get the real satisfaction. That’s part of how they stay with you.” – Celia Cudiamat
It started with a phone call transferred to Celia. Fifteen years later, the fund has awarded over $69 million nationwide, and $4 million to more than 200 IE nonprofits, with grants ranging from $6,000 to $500,000.
Building on this history of environmental stewardship, Celia oversaw the foundation’s role in the Regional Fire and Forest Capacity (RFFC) Program, a $1.6 million block grant from the California Department of Conservation. The mission of this flexible pool of funds is to help Riverside and parts of San Bernardino Counties increase forest and fire resilience in the face of a changing climate. Under her guidance, the foundation served as the administrator, bringing together local and regional stakeholders to develop a Regional Priority Plan to reduce wildfire risks in diverse environments.
Celia Cudiamat and David Hernandez, Regional Forest & Fire Capacity Coordinator at the 2024 Regional Wildfire Resilience Convening
The Willmas Charitable Trust, which Celia began managing in 2005, has been another steady thread through her tenure, directing more than $3.8 million to nonprofits serving the High Desert communities of San Bernardino County over the past two decades.
Tested and Ready
Celia led the Foundation’s role as the administrative community-based organization for Census 2020 outreach across Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, a $3.2 million effort that helped both counties exceed their 2010 self-response rates. The Census self-response phase launched in March 2020, precisely as the COVID-19 pandemic triggered global lockdowns. Celia found herself overseeing a high-stakes outreach campaign while simultaneously pivoting to coordinate more than $10 million in relief funding to nonprofits across the region.
“COVID was an exemplar year for us. The money came, and it was up to us to distribute it in a way that held true to our principles — how do we shore up our nonprofits, how do we reach the communities that are really suffering? It was a struggle, and we were all tired, but we discovered a lot about who we are and what we’re about. That was an epic time for this community to shine.” – Celia Cudiamat
A Legacy that Reflects the Region
Over the years, Celia’s leadership helped bring to life initiatives that reflect the full diversity and strength of the Inland Empire: the CIELO Fund to invest in Latino-led organizations, the M.E.C.C.A. Fund (formerly IE Black Equity Fund) to combat anti-Black racism and support Black-led organizations, the Women’s Giving Fund, the LISTOS emergency preparedness program, and a $1.5 million education equity initiative funded by the Gates Foundation.
The Community Impact Fund, IECF’s only unrestricted grantmaking program, also grew under her watch, shaped in part by her belief that responsive grantmaking starts with listening to what nonprofits actually need. That philosophy was on full display in 2025, when her team held focus groups in Riverside, San Bernardino, and Coachella Valley before designing the year’s grant cycle around flexible core support that nonprofits could expend over six months. The initial fund was $500,000. The James Irvine Foundation contributed $250,000 and the IE Funders Alliance added $100,000, bringing the total to $850,000 awarded to 45 nonprofits from 132 applications. It was one of the last grant cycles Celia oversaw, and it was built exactly the way she championed: by asking the community first.
Donors Brian and Lori Rennie in Joshua Tree with IECF staff, Brie Griset Smith, CSPG (L), Chief Development Officer, and Celia Cudiamat (R), Chief Impact Officer
Celia knows the work because she knows the people, and she has brought both knowledge and genuine investment to those conversations. The Inland Empire Celia has served is more recognized, more connected, and better resourced than the one she entered in 2004.
She leaves with firm convictions about what the region still needs: more unrestricted funding, more community-driven decision-making, and more investment to ensure that talent and leadership can grow right here in the Inland Empire.
“The challenge of distributing funding and scholarships from our hundreds of fundholders, while managing grants from public sources and private foundations, is a science and an art that Celia perfected for IECF,” said Michelle Decker, President and CEO. “She showed nonprofits and funders alike what it looks like to do this work with integrity and genuine commitment to the region. We are grateful for everything she has given to IECF and to the Inland Empire.”
Celia leaves behind an extraordinary body of accomplishments. If you’ve worked alongside Celia, you know the kind of expertise, presence, and commitment she brought to this work. We hope you’ll join us in celebrating her. Leave a message, a memory, and your good wishes below!
To ensure this space remains a supportive environment, all reflections are reviewed by an IECF administrator before they appear.