Leah Hunt-Hendrix, born and raised in New York City, holds a PhD in Religion, Ethics, and Politics from Princeton University where she wrote her dissertation on the Ethics of Solidarity under the advisement of Jeffrey Stout, Eric Gregory, and Cornel West, and has founded multiple organizations that have impacted the American political landscape through her commitment to building bridges between major donors and grassroots movements. In 2012, Hunt-Hendrix co-founded Solidaire, a national network of philanthropists dedicated to funding progressive movements with a focus on racial and economic justice, serving as executive director for five years and contributing to a significant shift in the philanthropic field toward “movement philanthropy” that prioritizes sustained support for social movements rather than traditional charitable giving. In 2017, building on that work, she co-founded Way to Win with Victoria Gavito and Jenifer Ancona, a progressive political organization and community for high net worth political donors that coordinates electoral strategies to support progressive candidates and movements, while also co-founding the Emergent Fund immediately after Donald Trump’s 2016 election to move resources to communities vulnerable to potential attacks from new federal policies. Hunt-Hendrix serves on the board of directors of the Action Center on Race and the Economy, the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and the Nation Fund for Independent Journalism, while acting as senior advisor at the American Economic Liberties Project and advisor to her family foundation, the Sister Fund, and her writing has been featured in The New Republic, Politico, The Nation, The Guardian, and Chronicle of Philanthropy. As co-author with Astra Taylor of “Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea” (published 2024 by Pantheon Books), Hunt-Hendrix offers the first in-depth examination of solidarity not just as a rallying cry but as a potent political movement, surveying the concept’s history from Ancient Rome through labor movements to contemporary movements like Occupy Wall Street (where she was a participant in the early 2010s) and Black Lives Matter, while arguing that understanding how solidarity is built and sustained is essential to warding off crises including right-wing backlash, climate catastrophe, and widespread alienation, insisting that solidarity must be both a principle and a practice that must be cultivated and institutionalized so that care for the common good becomes the central aim of politics and social life.
Why their voice matters: Hunt-Hendrix uniquely bridges the worlds of progressive philanthropy and grassroots organizing, demonstrating how wealthy individuals can use their resources to build rather than co-opt movements, while her theoretical work on solidarity provides essential frameworks for understanding how to create collective identities and political power that transcend divisions of class, race, and identity, offering practical guidance for building majoritarian movements capable of challenging concentrated power and achieving transformative social change in an era of polarization and inequality.