Rahel S. Tekola

Program Officer

Rahel is a Program Officer at the New World Foundation. In this role, she co-manages a $100 million quality jobs impact investment fund focused on job creation, small business growth and advancement, and economic mobility and opportunity. She also serves on impact advisory boards, providing key guidance on pipeline development, impact measurement, and social impact alignment.

Rahel also leads the foundation’s Phoenix Fund, which supports organized labor, climate resilience and fair job standards across the U.S. The fund also invests in national and local coalition building and place-based grantmaking.

Before joining the Foundation, Rahel was a strategist and consultant advising foundations, universities and national organizations on equity-based grantmaking and impact investment portfolios. Before that, she worked at Reisenbach Philanthropies and the Rockefeller Foundation, where she focused on impact-driven philanthropy and community economic development. At the Rockefeller Foundation, she contributed to the National Opportunity Zones project, helping to unlock private capital for investments in low-income communities. At Reisenbach Philanthropies, she led and launched the foundation’s first-ever impact investing accelerator program, bridging philanthropy and private capital to scale social enterprises.

A Texas native, Rahel holds a Bachelor’s in Political Science from Texas Tech University and a Master’s in Public Administration from Columbia University.