Abigail Carl-Klassen

I am a nonprofit development professional, educator, and storyteller with 18 years of experience as an evidence-based community practitioner, researcher, and interdisciplinary scholar focusing on transnational migrant communities in rural and urban settings in the U.S. and Latin America. I prioritize evidence-based, data-informed, community-driven solutions for securing new and sustainable sources of private and public funding that promote community agency & advocacy, equity, and wellbeing & thriving for historically marginalized communities.

Director of Grants & Institutional Giving at Ciudad Nueva Community Outreach (2025-01 – Present)

Grassroots, asset-based community development alongside socially and economically vulnerable youth, families, and older adults in downtown El Paso, Texas.

Director of Development at Ciudad Nueva Community Outreach (2021-04 – 2024-12)

Grassroots, asset-based community development alongside socially and economically vulnerable youth, families, and older adults in downtown El Paso, Texas.

• Quadrupled grant and institutional giving portfolio, securing large, multi-year awards from local, regional, and national partners, building internal capacity and strategic infrastructure over tenure with organization
• Managed a portfolio of 65+ foundation & institutional partners at all stages of grant life cycle with over $400,000 in institutional and foundation funding awarded in 2025. Provided support and oversight for the procurement of $118,000 in individual funds in 2025. Over 2 million raised during organizational tenure.
• Led fundraising & donor cultivation strategy, organizational forecasting, prospect research, board collaboration, and relationship building with public and private institutions & foundations and broad-based cohorts with an emphasis on social determinants of health, mental & behavioral health, and capacity building
• Supervised & mentored cross-functional teams to plan and execute operations, marketing & communications, and administrative targets for fundraising campaigns, events, individual donor stewardship, and grant compliance
• Designed and optimized organization-wide data collection, synthesis, and reporting systems across cross-functional operational, programmatic, and administrative teams
• Piloted action research initiatives in adult programming, training participant beneficiaries in surveying and ethnographic interviewing to collect and analyze quantitative and qualitative peer-to-peer economic empowerment and health systems & benefits navigation data
• Designed, launched, and optimized a Community Health Worker Certification Program, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Economic Empowerment Initiative, and a Small Business Incubator alongside participant beneficiaries
• Facilitated projects and partnership building with The University of Texas at El Paso's Center for Community Engagement, including volunteer management and institutional compliance

Partnership Development Coordinator & Grant Manager at Ciudad Nueva Community Outreach (2020-01 – 2021-03)

Grassroots, asset-based community development alongside socially and economically vulnerable youth, families, and older adults in downtown El Paso, Texas.

Partnership & Curriculum Development Coordinator at ABARA Borderland Connections (2020-01 – 2021-03)

Relational connection, experiential learning & meaningful action on the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Designed and piloted curriculum and content for borderland experiential learning initiatives

Grant Manager at ABARA Borderland Connections (2020-01 – 2021-03)

Relational connection, experiential learning & meaningful action on the U.S.-Mexico border.

• Managed grant lifecycles for $100,000 in international development and humanitarian aid project funding, with a particular focus on asylum seekers and COVID relief & mitigation in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico
• Designed and piloted a training program for immigration legal aid document translation to assist asylum seekers and legal aid organizations that in its first year trained 20 translators and translated 1000+ pages for more than 60 clients

Bilingual Community Liaison & Title III Interpreter & Translator at Floyd County Public Schools (FCPS) (2017-08 – 2019-12)

Culturally responsive, community-centered services, resourcing, and case management for Floyd County students and families.

• Facilitated communication between FCPS students & families, staff, regional agencies, and other community partners and stakeholders by providing language services and culturally responsive relationship building, including for federal and state compliance, crisis management, assessment, and safety plans

Family Reads Program Director at Floyd County Public Schools (FCPS) (2018-08 – 2019-05)

Culturally responsive, community-centered services, resourcing, and case management for Floyd County students and families.

• Designed, implemented, and evaluated bilingual family literacy curriculum and programming for FCPS students and families delivered in partnership with local nonprofits and libraries

Master of Fine Arts in Bilingual Creative Writing – The University of Texas at El Paso (2013-05)

Bachelor of Arts in English – The University of Texas at El Paso (2007-05)