Image courtesy EB PREC, 2025 Black Earth Day with EB PREC staff and attendees. Photo by Réya Photography, 2025.
The Center for Cultural Innovation, founded in 2001, created the AmbitioUS initiative in 2019 to intervene upstream by investing in culturally rooted, community-owned and governed economic systems based on mutualism.
These systems foster agency and economic stability, produce a shared sense of belonging and community vision, and create the conditions for formal and informal creativity, artistic expression, and innovation. Our vision in building back these communities, especially diverse communities, is to cultivate localized economies that once gave rise to thriving cultural and commercial centers such as Tulsa, Oklahoma's Black Wall Street; Oakland, California's "Harlem of the West"; Kansas City, Missouri's 18th & Vine jazz district; and Memphis, Tennessee's Beale Street, a cradle of American blues.
CCI launched AmbitioUS in 2019 as a time-limited pooled fund initiative, with the knowledge that significant demographic changes were on the horizon; technology was changing the economics of artists’ work; and race, gender, class, and ability-based disparities were pervasive even as people became more aware of these gaps. With an environment primed for significant disruptions, AmbitioUS would bring a systems-change lens to its work. While there was no way to predict in those early days how those disruptions might manifest, AmbitioUS began its work to support efforts that shift capital, power, and ownership to cultural communities under threat by focusing support on Economic Trailblazers and Artist Ownership. The lessons we are learning through the portfolios are fueling a new line of permanent work called Research to Impact Lab (R2i Lab).
Image courtesy of Ekvn Yefolecv. Weogufka, AL. Photo by Ekvn Yefolecv, 2023
We pair catalytic resources with relationship infrastructure, strengthening community-led and governed models, elevating the stories beneath the numbers, and building the tools, practices, and partnerships that help local economies take root, stabilize, and scale.
So that all the people creating our shared cultural future can thrive, build lasting stability, and shape economic systems that reflect their values, not just their survival. We sow the seeds for this reimagined future by pairing catalytic resources with relationship infrastructure—deploying capital stacks aimed at strengthening community-led and governed models, elevating the stories beneath the numbers, and building the tools, practices, and partnerships based on shared values that help local economies take root, stabilize, and scale.
OUR TEAM
Angie Kim
President & CEO
Dr. Angie Kim (she/her) has served as President and CEO for the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI), a California-based knowledge and financial services incubator for individual artists, since 2014. She is also the founder of CCI’s national, pooled fund program, AmbitioUS, which invests in alternative economic paradigms of and federated infrastructure by those seeking financial self-determination. Angie has over 20 years of experience in the arts and in philanthropy having worked in various roles in grantmaking, public policy, evaluation, and communications at the Getty and Flintridge foundations, and as director of programs at Southern California Grantmakers. In addition, while successfully pursuing her doctorate on the topic of U.S. private philanthropy, she worked as a consultant helping arts and social justice foundations connect strategic program design with evaluation outcomes. She has been a lecturer on philanthropy at Claremont Graduate University and University of Southern California, and has served as an advisor of numerous arts, impact investing, and equity initiatives. She has served on the boards of California Humanities, Leveraging Investments in Creativity, and as vice-chair of Grantmakers in the Arts and council member of American Alliance Association of Museums Center for the Future of Museums. Kim received her B.A. in art history and English literature from Linfield College, M.A. in art history from University of Southern California, and Ph.D. in public policy from Walden University.
Cate Fox
Senior Program Director
Cate Fox (she/her/hers) is the Senior Director, AmbitioUS. AmbitioUS is CCI’s national pooled fund program that invests in alternative economic paradigms and fresh social contracts in ways that artists and cultural communities can achieve financial freedom. Prior to joining CCI, she spent nine years at the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation leading and co-leading arts and institutional grantmaking; participating in and advising interdisciplinary initiatives that center artists and creatives as change-makers (such as Envisioning Justice); and supporting the Foundation’s racial and economic justice work. Additionally, she brings more than a decade of experience in nonprofit consulting, strategic planning, and fundraising. She has served as an advisory board member of the Center for Cultural Policy (University of Chicago) and Arts for Illinois Relief Fund. Cate is a creative writer, trained mediator, mother of three, and nonprofit nerd. Cate has an M.A. in peace and development studies from the University of Limerick (Limerick, Ireland) and a B.A. in interdisciplinary studies from Hollins University (Roanoke, VA).
