Meet Our Staff

Conway Collis has served as President & CEO of the Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles since 2023. He has led the development of the Fund’s We Are LA homelessness prevention program, which has already provided prevention services to more than 40,000 Angelenos at immediate risk of eviction and helped 23,000 individuals and families avoid eviction and become housing stable. The Mayor’s Fund is also providing casework and employment and housing navigation for all foster youth in LA County leaving foster care at 21.

Before joining the Mayor’s Fund, Collis served as the founding President/CEO of GRACE/End Child Poverty CA, Collis led GRACE and End Child Poverty CA from inception in 2013 through 2021. He led the 2018 development and implementation of a comprehensive evidence-based child and family poverty plan for California.

Since the plan was completed in 2018, 41 of the 43 recommendations have been fully or partially adopted, and more than $20 billion in state funding have been dedicated to the recommended anti-poverty programs and initiatives .  As a result, in 2019-20 alone 290,000 children and families moved out of poverty in California and an additional 115,000 out of deep poverty. Since then, hundreds of thousands more California families and children have received needed assistance .

Collis formed the End Child Poverty CA Coalition, co-chaired by Dolores Huerta with 173 organizations as members, to support advocacy for these and subsequent child and family poverty proposals.

Collis was previously Senior Counsel and Chief Public Policy Officer for the Daughters of Charity Health System where he created and guided enactment of state non-tax revenue legislation and required federal approval that has provided $40 billion to serve Medicaid patients in CA.

As an elected member and Chair of the California Tax Board, he directed reform of the state sales and income tax bureaucracies, sponsored successful measures including the Taxpayers Bill of Rights, tax code enforcement of laws against discriminatory practices, and childcare tax credits.

Previously he was a Counsel on the U. S. Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare working on domestic social programs and related issues.

Collis was the founding Board Chair of the National Foster Youth Institute from 2012-2021, now serving on the Board, co-chaired the CA Lifting Children and Families Out of Poverty Task Force and chaired the State Senate Bi-Partisan Task Force on Homelessness.

He is a graduate of Occidental College and Stanford Law School.