ABOUT DENNIS MAURICE
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Dennis Maurice Dumpson is an author, educator, thought leader, strategic consultant, and racial equity practitioner & leader.
He is Founder and Principal Consultant of #InvestBLK, a boutique racial equity & strategic planning consulting firm specializing in strategy development, learning & development, and coaching for organizations and leaders. Currently, Dennis' client list (past and current) includes KIPP Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Montgomery Child Advocacy Project, Philadelphia250, Arts & Business Council of Philadelphia, School District of Philadelphia, La Salle University, Lincoln University, CORA Services, and others. Through #InvestBLK's Black and Empty Fund Dennis has supported Black and Brown communities, individuals, and initiatives with more than $25,000 in trust-based funding. In 2025, #InvestBLK will make it's first targeted investment in Black and Brown leaders through the QUITTING FUND, which offers Black and Brown nonprofit leaders up to $5,000 if they need money to support their exit from an unhealthy work environment. |
Photo Credit: Atiba Sonnebeyatta
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Dennis is the Chief External Affairs Officer of Let's Get Ready (LGR), a national nonprofit supporting more than 25,000 students in 45 states from their junior year in high school on their road to earn a college degree through an innovative, peer-to-peer virtual coaching model. Prior to #InvestBLK and LGR, Dennis served as a Diversity Teaching Fellow & Lecturer with Community College of Philadelphia. Previously, he served as the inaugural Director of Community Engagement, DEI, and Outreach at the Philadelphia International Airport; Managing Director of Development & External Impact at KIPP Philadelphia Schools; Vice President of Development at Opportunity Finance Network, Senior Development Officer at Communities In Schools of Philadelphia, Senior Program Manager of Philadelphia Freedom Schools, and other roles.
As a thought leader, Dennis has been consulted on the topics of racial equity, justice, activism, political landscape, and anti-Blackness, including articles in the Washington Post, Socialist Worker, and CBS Money as well as his books: What My Colored Eyes See (2009) and Black Washed: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Dreams, and Letters Addressed to Black Folk (2022). He will soon publish scholarship with his mother, Adrianne Dumpson-Diggs, in their book Radical Sensitivity: Awareness Practices for Humane Communities (Very Black Books, 2025). In addition, his forthcoming book, Other Side of Soil: Our Journey through Mud and Magic (Very Black Books, 2025). Previously, he served on the Board of Directors the Education Works, Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, YMCA — Columbia North, Arch Street Preschool, EducationWorks, Philadelphia Pride Collective, and Chair of the Abortion Liberation Fund of Pennsylvania.
Dennis holds a BA in Philosophy (concentration in English Liberal Arts) from the nation's first degree granting HBCU, Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, and earned an MBA in Global Finance with fellowship & corporate residency in Santiago, Chile and São Paulo, Brazil from Saint Joseph’s University. He is currently on a doctoral journey and has conducted research on the mental health of Black education leaders as a Ph.D. student in Social Justice Education at the University of San Diego.
As a thought leader, Dennis has been consulted on the topics of racial equity, justice, activism, political landscape, and anti-Blackness, including articles in the Washington Post, Socialist Worker, and CBS Money as well as his books: What My Colored Eyes See (2009) and Black Washed: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Dreams, and Letters Addressed to Black Folk (2022). He will soon publish scholarship with his mother, Adrianne Dumpson-Diggs, in their book Radical Sensitivity: Awareness Practices for Humane Communities (Very Black Books, 2025). In addition, his forthcoming book, Other Side of Soil: Our Journey through Mud and Magic (Very Black Books, 2025). Previously, he served on the Board of Directors the Education Works, Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, YMCA — Columbia North, Arch Street Preschool, EducationWorks, Philadelphia Pride Collective, and Chair of the Abortion Liberation Fund of Pennsylvania.
Dennis holds a BA in Philosophy (concentration in English Liberal Arts) from the nation's first degree granting HBCU, Lincoln University of Pennsylvania, and earned an MBA in Global Finance with fellowship & corporate residency in Santiago, Chile and São Paulo, Brazil from Saint Joseph’s University. He is currently on a doctoral journey and has conducted research on the mental health of Black education leaders as a Ph.D. student in Social Justice Education at the University of San Diego.
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
“Those that want to see the other side of inequity in this life must pave those roads today and I hope my contributions build one of the bridges that gets us closer to freedom, justice, equity, and most importantly, honesty.”
-Dennis Maurice
Throughout my career I have raised more than $40MM in new funding, and secured and stewarded more than $100MM for communities with unmet needs. Dennis has also developed programming and initiatives that support the sustainability, transformation, and racial & social equity of communities across the country. My contributions have led to significant partnership development, ensuring that communities are valuable partners, not just recipients of good will.
Produced & Directed an episodic documentary about the life of a Black woman’s mental health journey after losing her job as a teacher as she reclaimed her love for dance.
Secured corporate funding from Sanofi-Aventis to support 30 youth (96% people of color) to be trained as community mappers and diabetes awareness educators. The high school and college students were paid a livable wage to develop programming to educate Promise Zone communities in Philadelphia (particularly the Frankford section of the city that, at that time, had the nation’s 2nd highest poverty rate). They also worked with a community health agency to test more than 140 people for diabetes, in a community that is 64% Black and Hispanic and 28% White, which acknowledges disparity. They took all this information and presented it to Philadelphia’s City Council to shift their work toward policy changes.
While I did not develop the initial partnership that built www.venturize.org, a platform to educate small business lenders on their options for accessing safe, responsible loan capital to build businesses. The initiative was first developed with a $3.6MM grant from Sam’s Club (SC) and the SVP of Small Business Initiatives and I supported the program by securing an additional $1.6MM in funding SC. This is important to the lens of racial equity, because the fintech industry targeted people of color and business owners with low net worth for loans with interest rates of up to 250%. The initiative is now run by Small Business Majority.
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Developed a hiring strategy to recruit applicants for temporary employment and internships from underrepresented communities at the Philadelphia International Airport. This hiring program included building relationships with HBCUs, Hispanic Serving Institutions, nonprofits that serve economically disinvested neighborhoods, and community colleges, which led to increasing the hiring of BIPOC communities by more than twenty-five percent. Moreover, these opportunities, while entry level, were assigned a livable wage of $12.20 per hour. This was valuable because traditionally interns are predominantly white and Asian, from Ivy League or top-tier schools, and/or hand picked by members of council, which excludes large populations of students from underrepresented communities. Moreover, we searched intentionally for graduate students from a larger community’s catchment.
OFN's CEO named me project lead for this relationship with Woodforest National Bank (Woodforest), which in partnership with Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) created the CDFI Community Investment Fund, LLC (created by community finance loan officers). The fund provides cost effective, flexible, subordinate long term investment capital for Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). The fund is an equity equivalent (EQ2) investment with an initial funding commitment of $5 million, with an option to increase the commitment up to $20 million over the next four years. The fund will provide patient capital to CDFIs financing small businesses and other community development projects in affordable housing, economic development, and neighborhood revitalization & stabilization throughout Woodforest's footprint.
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