Yamani Yansa Hernandez (she/they) is a leader, strategist, coach and advisor committed to the balance of vision, rigor and compassion. Yamani has worked in non-profit organizations across sectors for 25 years and led reproductive health, rights and justice organizations for the last fifteen years. Throughout her interdisciplinary career, she has used a creative and analytical skill-set to transform organizations, relationships and environments.  Currently she is the CEO of Groundswell Fund and an adjunct coach with The Management Center where she coaches other leaders through some of the most challenging quandaries of our time.

From 2015-2022 Yamani was the Executive Director of the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF). Abortion funds are grassroots organizations working to remove financial and logistical barriers to abortion access by centering people who have abortions and organizing for systemic change at the intersections of racial, economic and reproductive justice. During her tenure, abortion funds became a household name and both the national and local organizations grew dramatically in size, framing and capacity to build cultural and political power with a network of thousands of members. NNAF became a funding intermediary under her leadership and now funds $25M per year to grassroots abortion funds.

Before joining NNAF, Hernandez served as Executive Director of the state-based Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health (ICAH), which educates, organizes, and advocates on behalf of the sexual health, rights, and identities of young people aged 12-24. Prior to her work at ICAH, Yamani worked on ending economic disparities for youth of color through city-wide workforce development programs in architecture, construction and agriculture sectors as a district level administrator at Chicago Public Schools. She served as Program Director of Sisters Empowering Sisters, a youth-led grant making and leadership development program at the feminist family foundation, Girls' Best Friend Foundation. She was also a field organizer for Girl Scouts of Chicago serving managing volunteers on the southwest side of Chicago and directly providing scouting for homeless girls at over 11 shelters city-wide. Her formal leadership education began at Public Allies Chicago, founded by Michelle Obama.

Yamani was an early member of Echoing Ida, a program of Forward Together that supported the thought leadership and amplified the voices of Black women and non-binary people and a proud contributor to the culminating anthology The Echoing Ida Collection. She was a Ford Foundation Public Voices Fellow in 2016. She has written and been quoted extensively in outlets such as Rewire, Progress Illinois, The Reader, EBONY, The Nation, NY MAG and has appeared on MSNBC. She's talked publicly about her abortion, miscarriage, birth and parenting experiences.

Yamani earned a B.S. from Cornell University and an M.Arch. from the University of Washington. She became a licensed massage therapist in via Soma Institute in 2014, RYT 200 via Yoga Skills Method in 2016 and certified children’s yoga instructor via Global Family Yoga in 2013. Yamani enjoys travel, always looking for a new hiking adventure, testing fate as a non-swimming kayaker, pretending to be a photographer or soaking up every healing modality she can. (Banner photo credit: Bob Coscarelli)