Rosie E. Aquila

Program Manager

Rosie Aquila is a lifelong learner playing and evolving into a more complex, principled, and loving person every day. She brings more than a decade of experience in project management, strategic communications, facilitation, and design to ProInspire. 

Rosie entered social movements through Resource Generation, where she found a community of peers committed to deconstructing white capitalism, making collective decisions, centering BIPOC and working-class leadership, and moving money to movements while building the world we want. At ProInspire, Rosie supports projects across the country that guide nonprofit organizations and philanthropic institutions in aligning their social justice values with their policies. She has co-created sessions and presented on topics including listening for equity and shifting power in philanthropy, exploring individual and collective practices in times of transition, practicing collective reimagination to transform systems, and more. 

Rosie holds a BA in Anthropology from Kenyon College and MS in Communication for Development and Social Change from Temple University. These days, Rosie is leaning into her learning edges around generative conflict and principled struggle, consent-based storytelling, improv and play. She finds her joy in mixed media collage, cooking without recipes, analyzing reality television, and having spontaneous, wandering adventures in new-to-her locations.

What is your favorite form of self-care?

A lover of the both/and, I am energized by both the casual, impromptu hangs with belly laughs, good food, and beloved company and the days when I am in my bed, alone, watching The Bachelor or Survivor

What is something that you’re learning about? 

I am learning about herbalism and food traditions from my ancestors.

Why do you do what you do?

I do this work for myself and with others out of a love for people past, present, and future. I love people! I love the ways we dream, create, play, and relate to each other. I grieve for the ways interlocking systems of oppression have stripped us of our full humanity, and I aspire to do my part in building ways of being with each other that lets us all experience belonging, thriving, and liberation.