By Janee Bolden
LaToya Williams-Belfort has spent her career building pathways for underserved communities, but stepping into her new leadership role as executive director of the Bronx Community Foundation has even deeper meaning for her as a Bronx native.
“It felt like a homecoming,” Williams-Belfort told BLACK ENTERPRISE. “Throughout my career, I’ve been really intentional and really blessed to do work for communities that I authentically understood, and then to bring people to the table to drive investment and solutions for those communities.”
Williams-Belfort was raised in the Bronx, and long before she had the language for systems and structures, she understood what it meant to live inside them. “Growing up in the Bronx, I quickly was able to start to understand systemic barriers,” she said. “It was very clear to me that my community, my family, were hardworking, God-fearing, family-oriented folks, but you would hear terms like, ‘we just can’t get a break’ or ‘we just don’t have access to certain opportunities.’”
Those early observations stayed with her as she moved through school, into the workforce, and eventually into philanthropy. Over time, they crystallized into a framework that would guide her leadership. “Ultimately landing on this word that’s been so important to my life — equity,” she said. “What does it mean having equitable opportunity? So many people think equity means equality. We know that those are two totally different things.”
By the time the country reached an inflection point following George Floyd’s death in 2020, Williams-Belfort had already spent years working inside philanthropy. What shifted then was her sense of urgency around solutions. “The country was talking about racism in a way that had never happened in my life,” she said. “But we were all talking about the problems and how we got here. The solutions conversation was where I really wanted to lean in.”
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