We are pleased to welcome Nevin Öztop as Resource Mobilization Officer as we continue to grow our grantmaking budget and strengthen our philanthropic advocacy. She will play a major role in diversifying and expanding our major and institutional donor base. Read more about her below.
Nevin Öztop
Resource Mobilization Officer
Nevin is a feminist from Ankara, Turkey. She identifies herself as a feminist since a meeting she attended at “In Other Words Feminist Community Center” in Portland, Oregon in 2003. This is also why she considers “14 NE Killingsworth St, Portland” as the birthplace of her feminism. In Portland, on the 4th floor of Smith Memorial Student Union at Portland State University, she met a group of awesome queer activists who helped her combine feminism with queer perspectives. Later on, she came out twice but says coming out to her mother as a vegetarian was way more difficult.
During her 8 years at Kaos GL, she worked as the Editor-in-Chief of Kaos GL Magazine. There she also established and coordinated the “Regional Network Against Homophobia and Transphobia”, an anti-militarist and anti-nationalist LGBTI network in the Middle East, North Africa, South Caucasus and the Balkans. Before joining FRIDA, she served as the UN Programme Associate at ILGA and as the Outreach, Mobilization & Communications Officer at the International IDAHO Committee. She currently lives in Switzerland and continues to serve as an advisor for a number of women’s funders to help them allocate their funds to grassroots organizations effectively. As a socialist feminist, Nevin believes the world revolves around gender, class and race. She believes all these lead to an unjust redistribution of resources, primarily money and knowledge and adds, “This is why, I believe, those of us who are involved in philanthropy should be well aware of power dynamics at the tables we sit and the philanthropic culture of the countries we enter.”
