Cierra Brown Hinton

Cierra Brown Hinton is a nationally recognized strategist, fundraiser, and movement infrastructure builder working at the intersection of media, philanthropy, and social change. A North Carolina native from Reidsville and living in Durham, she has dedicated her career to helping mission-driven organizations grow sustainably — without losing the clarity, creativity, or community accountability that make them matter in the first place.

Most recently, as the Development Director at Blue Engine Collaborative, Brown Hinton coached newsrooms across the country on fundraising strategy, revenue diversification, and long-term sustainability. She is also a strategist at the Southern Power Fund, a growing movement infrastructure project working to raise and redistribute $100 million for Southern movement work, where she helps shape the project’s vision, narrative and donor strategy, governance development, and ecosystem partnerships. Brown Hinton is the Board Chair of LION Publishers, the national membership organization for local independent digital news outlets. Prior to that, Brown Hinton served as the Executive Director-Publisher at Scalawag, a Southern, Black-led, abolitionist media organization reporting with communities across the South on race, power, culture, and liberation. In that role, she led the organization's business and operational development — building the revenue infrastructure, governance systems, and organizational capacity that allowed Scalawag to grow into a nationally recognized institution.