Our Leadership
-
Founder and President
Kindred Motes is a strategist, writer, and funder focused on redirecting resources toward community-rooted leadership in the American South and Appalachia. A native of Morgan County, Alabama, he founded The Etolia Fund as a vehicle for redistributing capital, visibility, and trust toward people and places that have powered progress but too rarely shaped how it’s funded.
Kindred also serves as the Founder and Managing Director of KM Strategies Group, a social impact consulting firm that advises philanthropic foundations, nonprofits, and advocacy movements on equity-centered strategy, narrative power, and communications infrastructure. Through KMSG, he has led initiatives across civic engagement, disability justice, reproductive freedom, education, and youth power in partnership with some of the most prominent and influential nonprofit organizations and philanthropic grantmakers.
Prior to founding KMSG and Etolia, Kindred held senior leadership roles in philanthropy and movement organizations. He has led communications and strategy teams at The Tow Foundation, Wallace Global Fund, Vera Institute of Justice, and Southern Poverty Law Center and has been featured in Inside Philanthropy, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, NPR, Fast Company, and The Associated Press for his commentary on equity, philanthropy, and structural reform.
Kindred is a first-generation college graduate, a queer Southern leader, and a funder committed to moving capital at the speed of trust.
He has presented guest lectures in the US and UK at The University of St Andrews, Hunter College at the City University of New York, and The University of Essex and advised social entrepreneurs at Robin Hood Foundation’s Blue Ridge Labs, an innovation incubation hub.
Kindred serves as Chair of the Board of Directors for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alabama, as an Advisory Council Member of the Harvard Business Review, and on the Advisory Council of Fountain House. He previously served as a Senior Advisor to both Global Citizen and New America, on the Young Leaders Board of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, as an advisor to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, and as a communications advisor to Justice Centre Hong Kong. -
Co-Founder and Fund Advisor
Dr. Raúl Caso is a cardiothoracic surgeon, medical educator, and advocate for health equity whose life and career reflect a commitment to precision, proximity, and structural compassion. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia and raised in Havana, Cuba, Raúl brings a global awareness to deeply local questions of care, access, and trust.
He currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and as an attending thoracic surgeon at UPMC, where he performs complex thoracic procedures and helps train the next generation of surgical leaders. Prior to joining UPMC, he completed advanced fellowship training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and a seven-year general surgery residency at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. He also conducted thoracic oncology research at Memorial Sloan Kettering as part of a two-year research fellowship.
Raúl earned his medical degree and a Master’s in Clinical Investigation from NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Microbiology and Immunology from the University of Miami.