Natalia Zea serves as Chief Community Investment Officer at The Miami Foundation, where she works alongside teams to connect the nonprofit community, civic advocates, and community leaders to philanthropic and community resources. She is focused on building strong collaboration among changemakers, funders, and those most rooted in their communities, all in pursuit of more effective and lasting solutions to complex challenges.

She brings more than two decades of leadership across public affairs and partnerships. Most recently, she served for five years as Chief Public Policy, Community Engagement and Communications Officer at The Children’s Trust of Miami-Dade, where she led high-performing teams responsible for major public campaigns and a multimillion-dollar grantmaking portfolio. Before that, as District Director of Communications and Director of Community Engagement for Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s third-largest school district, she worked with cross-functional teams through unprecedented disruption, including a systemwide shutdown and the return to in-person learning, grounding the work in clarity, trust, and stability. Her path to public service began with 14 years as an investigative journalist, an experience that continues to shape her belief that communication is a core tool for accountability and change.

That grounding in accountability has also driven her to co-build and lead countywide coalitions, bringing together public and private partners, funders, and community resources around shared goals to turn fragmented efforts into coordinated, lasting impact. She is committed to ensuring people have safety, dignity, and real power in shaping the systems that affect their lives. Outside of work, she is a mother of two teenagers and a young pup who practically runs her household.