Shane Murphy Goldsmith
President/CEO
I grew up poor in Santa Monica. My clothes came from Goodwill. We had no health insurance. My parents died for lack of treatment. The experience helped me see injustice early on and I became a community organizer. When I needed funding to organize around welfare reform, people said, 'Talk to Liberty Hill.'
Shane Murphy Goldsmith is the President and CEO of the Liberty Hill Foundation. Established in 1976, Liberty Hill is one of the nation's most admired social change foundations and a leader in funding grassroots community organizing in Los Angeles.
Shane’s passion for social justice is rooted in her own background of growing up poor in Santa Monica. With no health insurance, both her parents died when Shane was young due to lack of treatment; thanks to a legal system focused on punishment at the expense of care, she saw her younger brother pulled into a cycle of addiction and incarceration. These searing experiences of injustice set Shane on the path to seek a better, fairer society for all.
Shane has led Liberty Hill since 2013, and has been on the staff since 2009. She has worked closely with the foundation's board, staff and community partners to develop smart strategies, galvanize and support grassroots leaders, and drive effective results. In that time, she has grown its budget from $8M to more than $30M, enabling Liberty Hill to provide training, grants, and campaign support to community-based organizations and leaders in Los Angeles. In 2017, she spearheaded the launch of Liberty Hill’s Agenda for a Just Future, which has supported LA’s grassroots leaders’ successful campaigns for reductions in youth incarceration by over 50%, local and statewide bans on neighborhood oil drilling, and strong rent caps and protections for renters.
In the broader philanthropic world, Shane stands out as a leader for progressive values and support for frontline organizers through her writing on best practices for funders, her popular interviews of brilliant changemakers for Liberty Hill’s award-winning podcast, and her public speaking from galas to marches. She is an active member of numerous philanthropic boards, including the California Executive Roundtable on Philanthropy and Equity, Southern California Grantmakers, and the Board of California Nonprofits.
Shane’s career prior to joining Liberty Hill exemplified what organizers refer to as “the inside-outside game,” working for progressive change alongside advocates and elected officials alike. Shane was the Executive Director of PATH Ventures, an affordable housing development agency. She oversaw the field office and served as a senior policy advisor to a member of the Los Angeles City Council, overseeing housing, economic development, the city budget, public safety, and LGBTQ issues. Before that, she worked as a community organizer focusing on economic justice in low income communities of color in LA.
Her vast knowledge of the policy and political landscape of the Los Angeles region has been shaped by volunteer civic leadership that includes appointments to the boards of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), and the Los Angeles Police Department, the nation’s most powerful police commission.
A graduate of Kenyon College, Shane spent a year as a National Hunger Fellow managing a homeless shelter in Indiana and conducting federal policy research on welfare reform in Washington, D.C. She holds a Master's degree in Public Policy and Administration from Cal State Long Beach.
Shane lives in Los Angeles with her wife Monica Granados, their two children, and three dogs.