Meet AFF Board Member Amara Andrus
Tell us a little about yourself.
My name is Amara Andrus, and I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I was born and raised. After attending Whitman College and living in Seattle for five years, my fiancé and I moved back to Minnesota during COVID to be closer to my family and our beloved cabin on Lake Superior. I work in marketing, primarily in project management and client relationships for direct mail and digital marketing campaigns, with the goal of building a portfolio blending for-profit and nonprofit clients. I have a degree in sociology from Whitman College, which underlies my perspective as a board member.
Tell us about your journey into philanthropy.
I started giving grants through the Andrus Youth Service Program (AYSP) when I was around 13 or 14, after going on a trip where I volunteered with the nonprofit Common Hope. While focused on academics and extracurriculars in college, I wanted to participate in the Board Experiential Training Program (BETS), but couldn’t due to scheduling conflicts. When we moved back to the Twin Cities in 2021, my partner and I consciously built our community involvement, and my cousin connected me with the Headwaters Foundation for Justice, where I now serve on the development committee. Their focus on lifting up primarily BIPOC communities in an intersectional way resonated with my sociology background.
What made you want to join the AFF board?
Joining the AFF board felt like carrying on a proud family tradition, as many of my relatives have served on philanthropic boards like Surdna and AFF over multiple generations. Beyond the family legacy aspect, I’m proud of the important work AFF is doing and felt I could meaningfully contribute to their mission. It’s an incredible opportunity for deep learning and growth, especially as a privileged white person. Too often, philanthropic boards can operate in insular ways that reinforce biases. But AFF cultivates an environment where board members are pushed to interrogate our assumptions and blind spots.
I value that AFF offers a space to engage with uncomfortable truths, ask questions, and occasionally fail or evolve our perspectives because that’s when the real learning happens. Ultimately, being a board member allows me to participate in the family’s philanthropic work in a very hands-on way while developing my own understanding and commitments to justice and equity. It combines the legacy I’m proud of with the urgency to do more and push further in service of our mission.
Tell us a bit about your experience on the board so far.
One of the most impactful experiences so far was our board retreat to Montgomery, Alabama. Not only did visiting sites like the Legacy Museum and National Memorial for Peace and Justice provide powerful historical context about slavery and racial injustice, but we went with facilitators who created a space for us to really do this work of reckoning and learning together as a board.
The retreat allowed dedicated time for personal connection beyond our regular board meetings. Lincoln, Zaira, and Mishi did an excellent job planning activities and discussions that fostered community-building among the board members. Having those deep connections and trusting relationships already established makes the hard conversations and growth opportunities easier.
I’m incredibly grateful for our community board members who bring vital perspectives and lived experiences that family members like myself need to be challenged by. Their voices strengthen our work immensely. Our staff also provides amazing support, creating opportunities for us to develop as engaged board members and thoughtful individuals.
AFF’s focus now centers around abolition. Have you always considered yourself to be an abolitionist? If not, when and how did that evolution happen?
I didn’t consider myself an abolitionist before starting this work, and that definitely stems from a place of privilege. A social justice series facilitated for the Andrus family during COVID-19 was really eye-opening for me and fueled my involvement with BETS 2 and then AFF.
As I engaged more deeply, conversations with fellow board members, guest speakers, and especially our grantee partners helped me understand and more fully embrace an abolitionist approach to our work. At first, I questioned whether we needed to use such direct language as “abolition”—wouldn’t that turn some people off or seem too radical? But I’ve come to see that if we are truly in partnership with the communities we fund, we need to use the terminology they use to describe their movements and goals.
It is a process of unlearning some of my own unconscious defensiveness and stepping outside my comfort zone. Reading abolitionist literature, listening to formative experiences from impacted communities, and seeing the transformative vision that our grantee partners have for justice helped shift my mindset. I realized that avoiding the term “abolition” would be watering down and distancing ourselves from the vital work happening on the ground.
While I can’t claim to fully understand the lived realities behind the abolitionist movement, I have committed to showing up as an abolitionist ally and putting in the ongoing work to deconstruct my own biases. AFF’s abolition framework pushes us all to keep interrogating the root causes of systemic oppression rather than just treating the symptoms. I’m grateful for the growth I’ve gone through over the course of this journey so far.
What are your goals and hopes for your time on the AFF board?
I’m interested in AFF increasing its spending to get more money into the communities that need it most, while still being fiscally responsible. I think this is a prospect that many board members support, especially after seeing the need for emergency pandemic funding.
What advice would you give to future board members?
Come as you are, but be willing to change and learn. Do the preparation and expect to leave each meeting with new perspectives. New viewpoints are assets – we need diversity of experience and thought. Be thoughtful, willing to learn, okay with being wrong sometimes, and open to respectful disagreement, as that’s how we all grow.
What are you most excited about in your upcoming work with AFF?
I’m really excited about AFF’s 25th anniversary celebration. I’m also looking forward to our funding expanding more into the South and Midwest. This could lead to interestingconversations as we consider how organizations in those regions align with our priorities in nuanced ways. I love it when the Midwest gets national attention!