Our grantmaking supports the Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC), and LGBTQIA+ communities, and the organizations that serve them.
Dr. Pei Desrosiers, the President and Board Chair of the foundation, recognized a profound resemblance between her father, Louis Desrosiers, and her partner in establishing the foundation, Louis Greene Stanfield II. Upon reflecting on Louis Desrosier's life and values, she discovered their shared principles and unwavering commitment to aiding others. This realization served as the inspiration for Dr. Desrosiers to suggest naming the foundation after these two remarkable men.
Louis Greene Stanfield II was born in 1951 in North Carolina to a working poor family. Growing up, he witnessed various forms of discrimination, including racism, misogyny, domestic and institutional violence, homophobia, and economic discrimination that were propped up by religious structures. He was introduced to social justice issues at an early age due to his mother’s bad health, which caused her to lose her job as an office worker. Louis became a good student and earned a full ride academic scholarship to the College of William and Mary in Virginia. However, he devoted more time to his job than to his attendance, which led to him being subject to the early draft lotteries of the time. To avoid being drafted into the Army, he enlisted in the Navy and became a hospital corpsman.
Louis realized that education was the key to a better life than that of his parents, and the Navy paid for him to finish his undergraduate education and major in nursing. He also attended the Navy Nurse Corps Anesthesia program at George Washington University. Later, Louis established nurse-directed anesthesia practices and became a serial entrepreneur. He supported feminist causes, equal rights initiatives, and justice for marginalized groups, including people of color and LGBTQ+ people. Louis obtained his PhD in pharmacology in 2004 and developed a new local anesthetic formulation in 2012, which led to the creation of Ventis Pharma Corporation. Ventis is a privately held company that works for FDA approval on several products to improve the anesthesia experience for everyone, providers and patients.
In addition to his business ventures, Louis has endowed a foundation to help with educational benefits for marginalized communities and worked to make investments in the company accessible to people who might not have considered investing in a drug company. He has a vision of what can be accomplished by a person with significant financial resources to further expand the benefits of education for historically disadvantaged groups. Louis hopes to provide opportunities to those born with fewer advantages in education and employment, and make the world less dysfunctional in his small corner.
Louis Bedard Desrosiers was born on January 21, 1932, in Aquin, Haiti, a descendant of Haitian and Cuban ancestry. He came into a world that offered him few advantages and demanded much — and he responded with a lifelong commitment to excellence, service, and the belief that a person of faith is obligated to act. Louis pursued his education with extraordinary dedication, earning degrees in both Accounting and Law in Haiti — the beginning of an academic tradition that would travel with his family across an ocean and across generations.
In the early 1960s, Louis and his wife Luce immigrated to the United States with their two daughters and settled in Brooklyn, New York. He opened an immigration service center, becoming a lifeline for Haitian families navigating the paperwork and bureaucracy that stood between them and citizenship, between separation and reunion. He helped people bring their loved ones home, attain their green cards, and become Americans in the fullest sense of the word.
In 1974, Louis and Luce opened the front door of their home at 127 Berkeley Place and invited people in to worship. “Thank You Jesus Church” was founded in their living room, — not in a sanctuary, not with institutional backing, but in the radical hospitality of a family who believed their home belonged to their community. Under Pastor Bedard’s leadership over 25 years, the congregation grew, purchased its own building, and relocated to its permanent home at 732 Nostrand Avenue in Crown Heights, Brooklyn — where it remains today.
Pastor Louis Bedard Desrosiers passed away in 1999, after 25 years of ministry. His wife Luce has since joined him. Their legacy lives on through their daughters — Marjory Desrosiers, who serves as Presiding President of the Board of Trustees of Thank You Jesus Church, and Dr. Pei Desrosiers, who founded the Stanfield Desrosiers Foundation in honor of her father and his remarkable life of service.
What We Do
Meet The Team
President &
Board Chair
Dr. Pei Desrosiers
Vice Chair
Anita Watkins
Treasurer
Talatha Kiazolu-Reeves
Secretary
Marcia Gilliard
Dr. Pei Desrosiers is the President and Board Chair of the Stanfield Desrosiers Foundation — an organization she helped bring into being from a moment of deep personal recognition. When Pei sat with Louis Greene Stanfield II and listened to how he moved through the world, she heard the unmistakable echo of her father, Louis Bedard Desrosiers: the same generosity toward strangers, the same refusal to accept injustice as inevitable, the same conviction that prosperity is something to be shared. That recognition became a foundation. Named for two men. Built for generations.
The foundation she leads supports BIPOC and LGBTQI+ individuals and communities in creating economic stability and building intergenerational wealth — investing in people and initiatives that disrupt wealth inequality through effective strategies that promote asset building and remove the barriers that have historically kept marginalized communities from economic participation. SDF funds work both locally and overseas, grounded in the belief that the communities it serves do not stop at borders.
Pei brings a rare duality to her leadership: deep expertise in fiscal management alongside an equally deep grounding in behavioral science. She has built her career at the intersection of mental health, social justice, and economic empowerment — understanding, as few practitioners do, that you cannot address one without addressing the others. Her fiscal acumen has been critical in ensuring the foundation operates with financial sustainability and rigor in service of its mission. Her behavioral science expertise shapes how she approaches every dimension of the work: the coaching, the relationships with grantees, the organizational development, and the advocacy.
A highly experienced Behavioral Health Clinician and Licensed Master Social Worker, Pei is also an ordained minister with a Doctor of Ministry in Interfaith Clinical Education and Pastoral Counseling. These credentials are not parallel tracks — they are deeply integrated. Pei’s clinical practice is grounded in the science of behavioral change. Her pastoral and interfaith formation grounds her in the spiritual and communal dimensions of human flourishing. Together they give her a view of people — and of the systems that shape their lives — that is both rigorous and profoundly human.
Central to Pei’s work is a clear-eyed understanding of intersectionality — the ways in which race, gender, sexuality, class, and faith compound both oppression and resilience. She is committed to addressing how systemic racism and discrimination shape mental health and economic wellbeing, and to building the kind of macro-level change that reaches people that individual practice alone cannot.
As a philanthropic leader, Pei has cultivated expertise across nonprofit development, organizational development, leadership coaching, audit, and social investment — bringing the same strategic vision to each. She is committed to funding innovative organizations, mobilizing capital for social investment in mission-aligned work, and serving as a deeply committed advocate for equity and justice at every level.