Terrance Pitts

Terrance Pitts is the founder of Kindred Advisory, a consulting practice focused on research, convening, and strategy development for philanthropic, advocacy, and cultural institutions.

Terrance’s career spans more than two decades advancing civil rights, racial justice, and criminal legal system reform. As a Senior Advisor and Temporary Program Officer in the Ford Foundation’s Gender, Racial, and Ethnic Justice unit, Terrance managed the Foundation’s $7 million mass incarceration reform grantmaking portfolio. As a Program Officer in the Justice Fund at Open Society Foundations (OSF), Terrance directed a $4.5 million national grantmaking portfolio focused on police accountability, death penalty abolition, and ending the practice of juvenile life without parole. At OSF, he organized and funded a ten-month planning process with advocates and philanthropic partners that gave rise to Communities United for Police Reform, a New York City advocacy coalition that won landmark police reforms at the city and state levels.

Most recently, he directed the Solidarity Collaborative at Proteus Fund, a pooled donor fund advancing multi-racial and multi-faith solidarity, where he produced convenings that brought national racial and social justice leaders and donors together with local advocacy organizations to advance the practice of solidarity. Earlier, Terrance served as Chief of Staff at the Vera Institute of Justice, where he project-managed the organizational strategic planning process that secured a $25 million investment from Blue Meridian Partners.

Through Kindred Advisory, Terrance has launched national pooled donor funds, including the Black-led Movement Fund and the Communities Transforming Policing Fund for Borealis Philanthropy. He co-led the strategic planning process that launched the Michigan Justice Fund. Over the past decade, he has conducted ecosystem analyses in nine cities for clients including the Ford Foundation and the Ohio Transformation Fund to map advocacy infrastructure and inform philanthropic investment strategies.

His work also explores the intersection of racial justice and artificial intelligence. 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 investigating the racially disparate impact of AI-driven technology in the criminal legal system. He developed an ecosystem landscape analysis drawing on more than 100 interviews across 70 organizations and launched the Center’s Technology and Racial Justice Collaborative, connecting advocates, researchers, and technologists. He built a first-of-its-kind legislative tracker monitoring federal and state surveillance technology bills with computer science and law students from NYU and Northwestern, and with early support from the Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic at Berkeley Law. He is currently building Justice Coded, a data and storytelling platform tracking state and federal justice-related legislation.

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. He served on the leadership team of Blackout for Human Rights, an artist-and-activist collective, 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 with distinction.