Terrance Pitts

Terrance Pitts is the founder of Kindred Advisory, a strategic advisory practice working with philanthropic, advocacy, and cultural institutions to translate field intelligence into institutional strategy, particularly during periods of movement transition. His career spans more than two decades focused on institutional philanthropy, independent consulting, technology and racial justice, and movement-building.

As a Program Officer at the Open Society Foundations’ Justice Fund and later as Senior Advisor in the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice unit, Terrance directed national grantmaking portfolios advancing police accountability, decarceration, and racial justice in the U.S. criminal legal system. At Open Society, he collaboratively organized and funded a ten-month planning process with advocates and philanthropic partners that gave rise to Communities United for Police Reform, a coalition that went on to win landmark police reform at the city and state levels. He previously directed the Solidarity Collaborative at Proteus Fund, a national pooled donor fund advancing multi-racial democracy through cross-movement solidarity. Terrance also served as Chief of Staff at the Vera Institute of Justice, partnering with the president and senior leadership on organizational strategy.

Through Kindred Advisory (formerly TLP Consulting & Philanthropic Advising), Terrance has co-designed and launched national pooled donor funds, including the Black-led Movement Fund and the Communities Transforming Policing Fund for Borealis Philanthropy, and co-led the strategic planning that launched the Michigan Justice Fund. Over the past decade, he has conducted ecosystem analyses across a dozen cities and regions for clients including the Ford Foundation, Cleveland Foundation, and Michigan Justice Fund to map advocacy infrastructure and inform philanthropic investment strategies during moments when funders needed to act quickly.

At NYU School of Law’s Center on Race, Inequality, and the Law, Terrance served as Senior Research and Advocacy Fellow, leading a MacArthur Foundation-supported initiative confronting the racially disparate impact of AI-driven surveillance in the criminal legal system and building collaborative infrastructure connecting advocates, researchers, and technologists. He is currently building Justice Coded, a data and storytelling platform tracking state and federal justice-related legislation for advocates, journalists, and researchers.

Terrance’s practice extends into culture and narrative work, which he sees as inseparable from policy and movement strategy. He is the producer and director of Heaven: Can You Hear Me?, a documentary about gun violence in Philadelphia that premiered nationally on PBS/WORLD Channel and received a 2023 Anthem Silver Award. From 2015 to 2018, he served on the leadership team of Blackout for Human Rights, an artist-and-activist collective founded by filmmaker Ryan Coogler, co-producing live-streamed cultural events like #JusticeForFlint and #MLKNOW 2016.

He holds a JD from Northwestern University School of Law, an MA from The Fletcher School at Tufts University, and a BA from Stanford University (graduated with distinction).