Kimberly L. Hurley doesn’t just talk about equity. She helps build the systems that make it real.
As Division Chief of Organizational Development and Equity for the City of Alexandria’s Department of Community and Human Services, Kimberly plays a vital role in ensuring the department’s internal practices reflect the inclusive, people-centered values it champions externally. And since 2020, she’s brought that same passion for justice to ACT, serving on the Fund for Racial Equity’s Community Advisory Board.
“Since I’ve been working with ACT, I’ve seen them engage with the community in creative and innovative ways,” Kimberly shares. “I think ACT’s understanding of who makes up our community and how varied they can be is integral in that work.“
That commitment shows up in countless ways, from scheduling Advisory Board evening meetings honoring busy lives, to offering meals and hybrid formats so parents, shift workers, and caregivers can participate. And for ACT, inclusion means linguistic inclusion too.
“One of the big things we talked about in our grant making process was ensuring the work we were doing – and the difference that we hoped to make – was accessible to everyone,” Kimberly explains. “So making sure all the top languages in Alexandria were represented so any person from any walk of life could jump on board and participate in whatever language they felt most comfortable.”
It’s more than a convenience. It’s a powerful statement of belonging.
“ACT makes space for community members to define and understand what’s going to be best for them, what’s going to move things forward,” she says.
For Kimberly, working with ACT has been “fantastic,” even through challenging times. “I admire the commitment of our advisory board. They care deeply about doing good in our community and ensuring those who have had the hardest experiences have the support and resources they need,” she reflects. “I think that has been a blessing.”
This philosophy comes through in her beliefs about philanthropy itself.
“Philanthropy is meant to allow people who have resources to share power and access with people who don’t,” Kimberly says. “And I think it’s important for those directly impacted to be involved in decision-making because they know best how to fix the problems they’re facing.”
She calls on us to trust lived experience as a form of expertise and to redistribute not just wealth, but power. And perhaps most poignantly, to believe in each other’s capacity to imagine better.
“The ideas of freedom and liberation are prevalent in my mind,” she says. She believes philanthropy has the ability to provide access to that dream and walking into those dreams.
As Kimberly so clearly puts it: “We want the people who’ve had it the hardest to have a say in what happens.” And thanks to her and others like her, more of Alexandria’s future is being built by the very people it’s meant to serve.