Katya Fels Smith

Katya Fels Smyth is a Senior Fellow at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University, where her work focuses on “WellLeaving” – increasing care and accountability in how philanthropy exits relationships with nonprofits, and how nonprofits exit relationships with communities.

Katya is a cross-disciplinary social change leader who identifies, illuminates, provokes, and orchestrates new ways forward that center what matters to people, rather than what’s the matter with them. She has spent over 30 years challenging assumptions and structures underlying American systems — including that scale and perpetuity are inherently valuable — and leading organizations and alliances that offer a new way forward.

In 1995, Katya founded On The Rise, a community of women pushed to the margins. In 2009, she founded the Full Frame Initiative (FFI), a national social change organization partnering with communities and government entities to advance wellbeing equity through power- and resource-shifting. In 2024, FFI initiated a transition of its mission to a national network of leaders, and a winddown of the organization, publicly challenging misconceptions about nonprofit closure.

Katya’s impact is felt in communities across the country in fields including community development, human services, planning, justice, and climate, via multi-state policy reforms, shifted government-community relations and funding ($750M+), and widespread attitudinal shifts to address ostracism and othering. She has a record of seeding and mobilizing boundary-spanning coalitions; developing rigorous frameworks grounded in science and validated by lived experience; and translating big ideas into durable, accountable implementation.

Katya holds an AB in evolutionary biology from Harvard and an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School. A former Echoing Green Fellow, MIT CoLab Affiliate, Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Clark University, and Harvard Research Fellow, Katya and her family live on a Massachusetts farm, where they grow and sell over 40 varieties of artisanal garlic and provide the good life to rescue farm animals.