Sharon Bissell is a philanthropic advisor with three decades of experience in philanthropy, women’s rights, and social justice. Her career spans leadership roles in large and small foundations, civil society, and the United Nations, where she has designed and implemented impactful strategies addressing local and global challenges. A dual citizen of Mexico and the United States and trilingual professional fluent in English, Spanish, and French, Sharon’s expertise lies in fostering trust-based philanthropy, building high-performing teams and cohorts, and advancing innovative approaches to systemic change in conjunction with practitioners bringing in diverse perspectives and expertise.
As Senior Advisor with Strategy for Humanity, Sharon participates in projects that engage civil society and philanthropists interested in ensuring that their investments focus on relevant topics in relevant ways to make the most of always-limited financial and human resources. She works alongside teams and individuals thinking through how to best coordinate complementary efforts to increase impact and encourage more inclusive and just values and practices in public services and public policy. She is keen on ensuring that grantmaking strategies are evidence-based, well-planned, thoughtful, and responsive to the needs and priorities of sector leaders while keeping processes light-touch.
Sharon is actively engaged in philanthropic efforts and civil society in Mexico. She is Board co-chair of Fondo Semillas, Mexico’s feminist fund supporting over 150 small organizations across the country, and Senior Philanthropic Advisor and Program Director at El hilo de Ariadne, a private philanthropy in Mexico. She has built out strategies to deploy funds in ways that foster peace and nonviolence, addressing societal factors that normalize and facilitate violence against children and women, including the impact on perpetrators.
Her previous work includes a twenty-year tenure at MacArthur Foundation, where, as Country Office Director, she managed an $8 million annual grant-making portfolio in support of topics that changed over time and spanned criminal justice, forced disappearances, transparency and accountability, migration, youth reproductive and sexual health, abortion rights, and maternal health. In 2017, she spearheaded a $17M USD multi-stakeholder initiative to revive and bolster midwifery in Mexico, and in 2019 she envisioned and jointly developed a $10 million fund called Acento, Acción Local, which launched in 2020 and now funds over 50 grassroots initiatives across the country. Her engagement in human rights led representatives of the families of Mexico’s 115,000 disappeared to invite her to apply to become a team to spearhead more humanistic, reliable approaches to human identification, a role she played between 2021-2022 as International Technical Cooperation Specialist for a forensic identification team housed at the United Nations Population Fund.
Her life in Mexico began in 1995, when she drove from the US to Mexico City and quickly became engaged in efforts to decriminalize abortion with leading feminists at Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida. She built extensive networks and become part of a vibrant feminist movement, working with national networks seeking to implement the ambitious goals of the Cairo and Beijing Programs of Action to guarantee and protect sexual and reproductive rights and end population control policies.
In addition to her professional achievements, Sharon is a certified yoga instructor, cenote-exploring scuba diver, hiker, an avid reader and creative writer, as well as a proud mom and cat lady. She naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 2018 and was Presidenta de Casilla for her neighborhood in the 2020 general elections. She has taught French and post-colonial studies at Tulane University and the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, and studied reproductive justice at the Colegio de México, human rights at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, and in Antioch University’s Creative Writing MFA. She is Executive Producer of Birth Wars, an artistic documentary that tells the story of the tension between the medical establishment and women and midwives who want to take back control over their reproductive processes. In 2023, her second published short story, El Canto de los volcanes, appeared in a compendium with the independent publishing house Nocturlabio.
As Senior Advisor with Strategy for Humanity, Sharon participates in projects that engage civil society and philanthropists interested in ensuring that their investments focus on relevant topics in relevant ways to make the most of always-limited financial and human resources. She works alongside teams and individuals thinking through how to best coordinate complementary efforts to increase impact and encourage more inclusive and just values and practices in public services and public policy. She is keen on ensuring that grantmaking strategies are evidence-based, well-planned, thoughtful, and responsive to the needs and priorities of sector leaders while keeping processes light-touch.
Sharon is actively engaged in philanthropic efforts and civil society in Mexico. She is Board co-chair of Fondo Semillas, Mexico’s feminist fund supporting over 150 small organizations across the country, and Senior Philanthropic Advisor and Program Director at El hilo de Ariadne, a private philanthropy in Mexico. She has built out strategies to deploy funds in ways that foster peace and nonviolence, addressing societal factors that normalize and facilitate violence against children and women, including the impact on perpetrators.
Her previous work includes a twenty-year tenure at MacArthur Foundation, where, as Country Office Director, she managed an $8 million annual grant-making portfolio in support of topics that changed over time and spanned criminal justice, forced disappearances, transparency and accountability, migration, youth reproductive and sexual health, abortion rights, and maternal health. In 2017, she spearheaded a $17M USD multi-stakeholder initiative to revive and bolster midwifery in Mexico, and in 2019 she envisioned and jointly developed a $10 million fund called Acento, Acción Local, which launched in 2020 and now funds over 50 grassroots initiatives across the country. Her engagement in human rights led representatives of the families of Mexico’s 115,000 disappeared to invite her to apply to become a team to spearhead more humanistic, reliable approaches to human identification, a role she played between 2021-2022 as International Technical Cooperation Specialist for a forensic identification team housed at the United Nations Population Fund.
Her life in Mexico began in 1995, when she drove from the US to Mexico City and quickly became engaged in efforts to decriminalize abortion with leading feminists at Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida. She built extensive networks and become part of a vibrant feminist movement, working with national networks seeking to implement the ambitious goals of the Cairo and Beijing Programs of Action to guarantee and protect sexual and reproductive rights and end population control policies.
In addition to her professional achievements, Sharon is a certified yoga instructor, cenote-exploring scuba diver, hiker, an avid reader and creative writer, as well as a proud mom and cat lady. She naturalized as a Mexican citizen in 2018 and was Presidenta de Casilla for her neighborhood in the 2020 general elections. She has taught French and post-colonial studies at Tulane University and the University of Puerto Rico Mayaguez, and studied reproductive justice at the Colegio de México, human rights at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, and in Antioch University’s Creative Writing MFA. She is Executive Producer of Birth Wars, an artistic documentary that tells the story of the tension between the medical establishment and women and midwives who want to take back control over their reproductive processes. In 2023, her second published short story, El Canto de los volcanes, appeared in a compendium with the independent publishing house Nocturlabio.
