Martha Lucas was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and grew up in North Seattle. She is a proud Garfield High Bulldog and double Husky. She received her Bachelor’s degree in political science and Masters in Health Administration. Since 2014, Martha has been a full service insurance broker in Commercial, Life, Medicare Insurance plans, and Disability. In 2021, Martha became the Executive Director of the largest African Diaspora nonprofit, Washington State Coalition of African Community Leaders (WSCACL) which represents 60 African descent member organizations and 90 African descent individual community leaders. WSCACL provides unique core services of video/audio translation in over 30 major African languages and outreach to their combined shared media network reach of 140,000. Since 2020, WSCACL membership has tripled, every African diaspora region has joined membership for the first time, nearly $1M has been secured for diaspora programming, committee membership increased from 3 to 20 active permanent volunteers, and WSCACL became the first African led and African serving non profit in WA state to adopt a shared co-governance model with a 35 Community Advisory Council that includes representation from every region in Africa, African American, Caribbean, LGBTQIA+, religious leaders, business owners, professionals, and non profit leaders.

Martha joined Washington Women’s Foundation in 2021, because I wanted to learn more about how to successfully apply for WaWF grants to help our member organizations that apply and to network with like-minded women or women identifying professionals, advocates, and disrupters. With women and civil rights under constant attack, it is important to return back to the women’s rights days of working across communities and with our allies to ensure we do not return back to the 1950s.