Kara Williams

Kara Williams is Director of Strategy at the Allyn Family Foundation.  Kara brings over 25 years of experience designing and directing large, complex community initiatives, with a focus on impact investment that builds on local data, community voice, and transformative policy and practice changes.  Previously, Kara was Senior Program Officer at the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York, where she led the Foundation’s early childhood, policy and capacity building portfolios.  She has also directed clinical service delivery, health promotion and policy advocacy programs at the Onondaga County Health Department, and managed community-based participatory research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine’s Division of Community Pediatrics.  In addition, she has overseen health journalism programs, trained law students in mediation and creative problem solving, and provided technical assistance to nonprofits in program design and evaluation, and strategic planning.  Kara is a Grantmakers In Health Terrance Keenan fellow and a fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Ladder to Leadership program.  

Kara holds a bachelor’s degree from Vassar College and a Master of Public Health degree from San Diego State University.  She is a native of Syracuse and graduate of Nottingham High School and is thrilled to live and work and raise her family in the community that she loves.