The Kinship Fund

With more than a decade of leadership experience in philanthropy and nonprofit development, Michelle has helped organizations grow revenue, deeApen donor engagement, and strengthen organizational capacity. Prior to founding Uncommon Craft, she served as Vice President of Global Fundraising at Biblica and Vice President of Development at San Diego Rescue Mission, where she led fundraising strategy, team development, and organizational growth initiatives.

Throughout her career, Michelle has remained committed to serving marginalized communities, including international refugees, at-risk youth, survivors of sex trafficking, and individuals experiencing homelessness, poverty, and addiction. She is passionate about advancing work that creates greater opportunity, dignity, and hope for those too often overlooked.

Michelle brings expertise in fundraising, strategic planning, board and executive partnership, and sustainable organizational growth. She is known for her thoughtful leadership, collaborative approach, and ability to connect vision with execution.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Point Loma Nazarene University and a Master’s degree in Human Services from the University of the Rockies. A Southern California native, Michelle lives in San Diego with her husband, Mauricio, and remains actively involved in her local church and community.

Crystal works for a local San Diego law firm, where she leads a team dedicated to wildfire cases, advocating for families and individuals who have lost their homes and livelihoods due to fires caused by corporate negligence. She believes that legal professionals have a duty to serve not just their clients, but the broader cause of justice and human dignity.

As the daughter of Iraqi immigrants, Crystal has a strong connection to the SWANA community. Much of her volunteer work has been focused on supporting refugee populations, and she looks forward to building real, lasting relationships in her neighborhood through the Kinship Fund.

A lifelong San Diegan, Crystal was raised in the Chaldean community of El Cajon, where she still resides with her husband and three children. She enjoys live music, poetry, yoga, art, and traveling. One of the guiding principles she and her family strive to live by comes from Pope Francis: “I ask everyone [with political responsibility] to remember two things: human dignity and the common good.”

Jessica D. Naidu is a restorative leader with more than a decade of experience teaching and learning around the globe. Most recently, she was the Assistant Director of the Center for Restorative Justice at the University of San Diego where she provided vision, strategy and direction for a national team, facilitated trainings and supported day-to-day operations including the management of multi-year federal grants.

Jessica has a Master of Arts in Higher Education Leadership and a Certificate in Restorative Justice Facilitation & Leadership from USD. Her graduate research examined institutional willingness to use restorative justice as a resolution for cases of gender-based misconduct, and it resulted in USD allowing students to choose restorative resolution in these sensitive cases. She also recently published a chapter in the book, Applying Restorative Justice to Campus Sexual Misconduct: A Guide to Emerging Practices.

As a writer and former journalist with a passion for education, Jessica is inspired by the community and healing that comes from restorative processes rooted in the power of storytelling. She spent five years managing teen services programs at literacy non-profit Words Alive where she supported students in San Diego who were undocumented, impacted by the justice system and/or experiencing homelessness, pregnancy or parenting. Jessica has also taught English in Santiago, Chile, and trained teachers and developed young leaders in rural West Africa.

Jessica is currently taking a sabbatical from the workforce, so she can home with her son, Avi, who was born in March 2023. 

Sydney Pidgeon, serving as Treasurer of the Kinship Fund, brings her experience in higher education and commitment to educational access and community development to the board. Sydney presently holds the position of Associate Director of Study Abroad at American College of the Mediterranean-Institute of American Universities, a renowned international leader in global immersion and education. In this role, she oversees the study abroad opportunities at all ACM-IAU across the Mediterranean aimed to provide excellence in international education, inspire intercultural awareness, and prepare students for success in a global community through the study of European and Mediterranean history, languages, cultures, and contemporary issues.

This experience, in partnership with Sydney’s Masters Degree in Higher Education Leadership and Certificate in Restorative Justice, inform Sydney’s approach to community partnerships and collaborative dialogue aimed towards creating a sustainable impact. Sydney has demonstrated this commitment through her career in Higher Education and work as a Restorative Justice practitioner focused on community reentry, police-community collaboration, victim-offender mediation, and community building.

Sydney is a life-long San Diegan, and dedicates much of her time supporting San Diego based initiatives. Sydney currently serves on the Board for San Diego County Crime Stoppers, is an active member of the La Mesa Village Association, volunteers through the National Center for Restorative Justice based in San Diego, and serves on the personnel committee at her church, Normal Heights United Methodist. Sydney currently resides in La Mesa, California, with her husband, Zach, and two dachshunds, Willie and Juni.

Kim became President of the Kinship Fund the way most meaningful things happen: because someone she loved asked her to. When her friend Nancy passed away, she asked Kim to build something that would support women and girls. Kim said yes, and spent the next season figuring out what that really meant.

What she brought to it was unusual. Four distinct careers spanning healthcare, marketing, higher education, and nonprofit leadership, plus a decade on the ground hustling for grants, navigating foundations, and learning exactly where the system fails the people it’s supposed to serve. That experience didn’t just prepare her for philanthropy. It gave her something to push back against.

The Kinship Fund operates differently by design. Multi-year unrestricted funding, in-person listening sessions instead of written reports, along with every internal process tested against one question: what’s actually best for the nonprofit leaders doing this work? The goal is to shift power, not perform it.

Today, the Kinship Fund supports two efforts in San Diego. The first is the Place-Based Project to Support Refugees and Immigrants in El Cajon. The second is the Youth Mentorship Collaborative, partnering with nine nonprofits focused on young people.

Kim is also co-author of Empathy Impact, a bestselling book rooted in the belief that real innovation starts with relationships. Earlier in her career, she launched the first college scholarship in the country specifically for survivors of human trafficking, built through her work at Point Loma Nazarene University’s Center for Justice & Reconciliation.

Her biggest point of pride is her two kids: a son who serves as a police officer and a daughter who teaches and advocates for students with special needs. She and her husband, Chris, share their home with three dogs who are convinced they have a seat at the table, too.