Ouida (pronounced Weeda) Joi Cooper-Rodriguez is a seasoned nonprofit executive and organizational strategist with more than three decades of leadership experience strengthening mission-driven organizations. Over the course of her career, she has served in senior leadership roles including Executive Director, Interim Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer, Chief Program Officer, and Fund Development Director, bringing a comprehensive perspective to nonprofit leadership and organizational growth. She specializes in organizational development and fund development systems, strategic planning, program development, and building the operational capacity that allows nonprofits to expand their impact and long-term sustainability.

 

Over the course of her career, she has helped raise or support the acquisition of more than $50 million in funding for nonprofit organizations. In 2025 alone, she secured more than $400,000 in public and foundation funding in just six months and submitted more than $1.5 million in additional funding requests. Her work has focused primarily on trauma-informed, low-barrier, strengths-based homelessness and housing services (HUD, ESG, and CDBG programs), affordable housing initiatives, women’s empowerment, community development, microenterprise, and food security programs.

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Ouida Joi holds a Master of Arts in Management and a Bachelor of Arts in Behavioral Science/Psychology (Magna Cum Laude), with Master’s-level coursework in Social Work. She trained through the Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC) during its founding years and brings more than two decades of experience supporting executives and emerging leaders through periods of transition and reinvention.

 

A member of the International Coach Federation (ICF), the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), and the Grant Professionals Association (GPA), she combines strategic insight with a reflective leadership approach that helps organizations and leaders align mission, systems, and impact.

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An Air Force veteran, Ouida Joi began her career as a Mental Health Clinic and Medical Social Work Specialist and later served in the Army National Guard as a Public Affairs Specialist and Broadcast Journalist.

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Originally from Brooklyn, New York, she spent four decades in the San Francisco Bay Area and now divides her time between Delaware, Las Vegas, and the Bay Area. An amateur Miksang photographer and Mindfulness Meditation Facilitator, she enjoys writing, yoga, singing, travel, and spending time in nature, especially along the Pacific Ocean.