Greg Smiley, our founder, brought experience in both U.S. domestic health and global health systems. For nearly a decade within the UN system at UNAIDS, he drew inspiration from the monumental success of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, which secured enormous financial commitments and awarded grants to fight those diseases.

He secured over $4 million in seed financing, wrote a white paper on the concept, and commissioned George Washington University to make recommendations on the model.

Adira debuted inauspiciously in April 2020, just as COVID took over. Adira re-worked its initial round of grants, turning Round 1 into Emergency Fast Track Funding for 11 nonprofits.

Ultimately, Adira deployed three rounds of competitive grants, funded another five nonprofits directly with awards for highly inventive ideas, worked with another large donor to build "Adira in Miniature" across four rural states, and published research in Quality of Life metrics and similar issues.

In 2022, it attempted its most ambitious endeavor yet: building a Neurodegenerative Disease Congress of nearly 100 participants to design Round 4, with at least 51% of participants being patients and caregivers with lived experience.

Adira became another casualty of COVID pandemic. We were hamstrung by not being able to take in-person meetings, raise awareness, and to secure the funding we needed to match our pacing. The foundation deployed its resources to 26 nonprofits with urgency, but couldn’t keep our own fundraising move apace. The board decided to table Round 4, summarize all learnings to date by publishing a Blueprint for Action, wind down financially in the black, and sunset the organization. In a bittersweet blessing, Greg Smiley was able to pivot full-time to primary caregiving for his mother, living with terminal illness for the last 15 months of her life.

But our legacy lives on.