Natalija Simović

Natalija Simović (Наталија Симовић) is Ignite’s Co-Director, Programs, working particularly on the Thrive Together initiative from co-design to implementation. She joined Ignite Philanthropy from a previous role of Grantmaking Program Director for the Western Balkans region within the Trag Foundation, Belgrade, Serbia. In this capacity, she developed and led the Issues Affecting Women program for the Western Balkans in partnership with Oak Foundation.

She has devoted her career to thinking, leading and facilitating processes for innovations in participatory grantmaking, movement building, and engaging with grassroots and survivor-led initiatives.

She has almost 15 years’ experience in working in civil society organizations in Serbia and the broader Balkans area, and as of her role Ignite she is engaged on a more global scale.

Natalija is a Resource Alliance certified trainer for fundraising and author of research and texts on philanthropy and social capital as a fellow at the Center for Philanthropy at CUNY, New York, and on feminist funding within the Center for Women’s Studies, Faculty of Political Science, Belgrade.

She is passionate about community and political organizing, so her free time is devoted to working to build green, left, and feminist political alternatives in Belgrade and Serbia within the Green-Left Front party.

Whenever she can squeeze in anything else in her schedule she enjoys good vegetarian food, long- distance running, good reads, philosophy podcasts and almost all forms of socializing.

Preferred gender pronouns: she/her/hers