Congratulations to Bridget Flood, Executive Director of Incarnate Word Foundation, and recipient of our 2025 Transparency & Trust Award.
The Transparency & Trust Award recognizes a person who:
Works with honesty and openness and isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, especially when things don’t go as planned.
Co-creates work with the people and partners they serve and works to build shared trust so that all at the table feel supported and valued as part of the process.
Embraces mistakes and weaknesses in the open as opportunities to learn and grow.
As Executive Director of the Incarnate Word Foundation, Bridget Flood leads with heart, not hierarchy. For her, incarnational spirituality means seeing God in every person—and letting that belief guide every grant, partnership, and project. She believes the most impactful change doesn't come from strategic plans on paper, but from the ground up, rooted in the human element.
Bridget’s work reflects that philosophy. Some of her proudest contributions have been in affordable housing through the St. Louis Art Place Initiative, a land trust model designed to support artists of color and LGBTQIA+ artists in Gravois Park, and the St. Joseph Housing Initiative (SJHI), a buy, rehab, and sell model in Dutchtown and now Baden. Originally partnerships with the Kranzberg Arts Foundation and the Archdiocese of St. Louis, these projects have flourished with 16 homes completed in Dutchtown, expansion into Baden, with Kranzberg now carrying their models and organizations forward independently.
Her longstanding commitment to justice took on new urgency in the years following Ferguson. Bridget and the Foundation deepened their focus on community-led solutions—supporting efforts like repurposing church properties, building new homes in The Ville, and creating pathways to wealth-building through homeownership. She emphasizes the importance of community ownership, where residents lead the work and parishioners help to fund the change.
Bridget still carries with her the moment a little girl, proud in her new home, said she’d sit in the window she helped paint “like a princess in her castle.” “For $41,000, we helped eight people who have since helped hundreds,” she says.
“Making a grant is not hard. The people doing the work—that’s hard. The real hero isn’t me. I did one thing. They do the hard work every day.”
Bridget is also an author, mother of two daughters, proud grandmother of five, wife to Michael, and finds joy with her dogs and in her pottery studio—a space for reflection, creativity, and grounding.
