As Piece by Piece celebrates 20 years of helping people rebuild their lives through art, we're thrilled to welcome Chelsea Oruche as our new Director of Development. Her role has two sides that work hand in hand. On the giving side, she'll grow and sustain the community of donors and funders who back our programs. On the business side, she'll bring our artists' mosaics to new clients through commissions and partnerships, putting Piece by Piece's work in front of more people and creating more paid work for our artists.
Chelsea knows from lived experience what it means to need someone to open a door. Her career has been about opening doors for others, and about building the relationships and resources that keep them open.
That work has taken her from rural El Salvador to college campuses across the country. As a Peace Corps volunteer, she supported small business development and led an initiative to increase educational attainment for young women. Years later, with The Wonderful Company's corporate social responsibility team, she advised first-generation college students from California's Central Valley at schools nationwide and helped shape a strategy to keep them enrolled through graduation.
Along the way, she learned that opportunity grows when the right partners stand behind it. At TNTP, she managed a multimillion-dollar donor portfolio and built public-private funding partnerships for the organization's regional work with school districts. Over more than seven years at Redefine Alliance (formerly REDF), a national leader in employment social enterprise, she led outreach and business development. She cultivated a pipeline of partners and entrepreneurs, carrying them from first conversations to deep engagement and helping put capital behind businesses creating jobs for people facing barriers to work.
Chelsea is also an attorney. Her legal work has ranged from representing immigrant youth in asylum and Special Immigrant Juvenile Status cases to overseeing contracts and compliance for a national impact lender, which gives her a strong foundation for building well-structured partnerships with funders, public agencies, and commission clients.
For two decades, our artists have shown what's possible when someone believes in them. As Piece by Piece enters its third, Chelsea brings exactly what this moment calls for: lived understanding, deep relationships, and a talent for turning connections into lasting support. She's here to help more people see our artists' work, buy it, and back it.
A first-generation college graduate, Chelsea holds a B.A. in international relations from CSU, Chico, an MPA from the University of Southern California, and a J.D. from Mitchell Hamline School of Law, and she is an active member of the California Bar. She has called Los Angeles home for ten years and lives in San Pedro with her family. You'll see her at the studio, at our holiday pop-ups, and out in the community this season. Whether you'd like to support our programs or bring a mosaic into your next project, she'd love to hear from you.
Please join us in welcoming Chelsea to the Piece by Piece family!