Community Engagement Manager / Age 35
Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region
As a Lawrence University student in 2008, Carolyn Desrosiers taught music in Haiti, eventually making about a dozen trips over 10 years to teach cello, orchestra, chamber music and music theory. The experience led her to create a feature documentary film screened around the country.
Desrosiers now speaks Haitian Creole “almost fluently,” and has spent six years in her role as community engagement manager at the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region. In that role she designed and co-presented a session on equity in grantmaking for the 2022 PEAK Grantmaking Conference, attended by almost 200 people from around the country. She also co-hosts the Voices from the Valley podcast.
“I see so many incredible changemakers seeking to make Northeast Wisconsin a place where everyone can thrive, but I think we need to build our individual and collective capacity for the difficult, and yet liberating, work of racial justice,” Desrosiers says.
She also co-led Harmony Café (a former program of Goodwill NCW) from about 2005 until its closure in 2014. “Harmony was my entry into the nonprofit community and such a rich and diverse learning environment,” Desrosiers says. “I would not be the person I am today without the opportunity to ‘grow up’ at Harmony.”
Desrosiers, now the mother of two young children, is currently pursuing her master’s degree in public administration with a concentration in sustainable communities through public service.
