photo of joanna ramirez

Joanna Ramirez

Program Operations Director

Dr. Joanna Ramirez provides strategic and day-to-day leadership of grants management and administration, program operations and technology. She partners with staff to ensure our grantmaking processes and practices are simple, supportive and advance equity. She joined the Foundation in 2023.

Joanna's background spans the nonprofit, philanthropic, social enterprise, and for-profit sectors. She previously served as vice president of site leadership for College Possible's national office and more recently as executive director of College Possible Minnesota. Prior to this, she was vice president of business solutions at Metropolitan Economic Development Association, where she oversaw business consulting services as well as a $20M loan fund.

As a 2018 Bush Fellow, she completed executive education programs from Stanford Graduate School of Business and Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.

Joanna enjoys outdoor running and practicing yoga.  She has two sons, Danny and Dylan, and a dog named Lola who is her loyal running partner.