Fast 15: Leilani Ocasio

Leilani Ocasio isn’t discouraged by rejection. It just means there is another path to a “yes.”

Ocasio graduated from Northside High School in Fort Smith and earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Lyon College in 2018. One of her jobs after college was with the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank, where she helped with funding grants. Part of that work included time with Fayetteville-based M. Palmer Consulting, a firm that primarily works with nonprofits to write grants and find new funding sources.

Ocasio said Melanie Palmer recruited her to work with the firm, and she made the move because she saw it as a way to help a broader range of nonprofits.

“I wanted to make a bigger impact in the community,” she said. “I thought if I worked with more nonprofits, I could do more, instead of working with one and working with just one population.”

Much of her time involves writing research reports for small- to mid-size nonprofits, demonstrating the funding options available from various public and private sources.

“That’s impactful because they see they have options and hope,” she said.

The struggle is that not all grant applications are accepted.

“Not every proposal will get funded … and that’s heartbreaking when you’ve worked hard with a client to get their story, and they put in the time and work in the back end,” Ocasio said.

Ocasio said rejection is part of the process, noting that you might get 100 rejections, but “one yes can make a big difference.”

Yoga, her two “perfect little pups” and working in a greenhouse are some of Ocasio’s activities when she’s not working with nonprofits. She lives in the Fort Smith area with her husband, Zachary Mainer, a farmer.

Her goal is to become a partner at M. Palmer Consulting and expand the work she does with minority-managed and focused nonprofits. As a member of the Arkansas Chapter of the Grant Professionals Association and the national Grant Professionals Association Board of Directors, she wants to do more to recruit others to the grant-writing field.

“Part of my mission is to help find a way to bring more people into this profession,” she said.