My friend Roanne Dods, who has died of cancer aged 51, was founding director of the Jerwood Charitable Foundation, through which she distributed £14m of grants to a vast range of arts organisations over 11 years.

She was born in Peru to expat parents, Jean (nee Mennie) and Robin Dods, who worked in the fabric industry, and who also had two sons. The family moved to Milan when Roanne was 10. She boarded at Wellington school, Ayr, and went on to study French, Arabic and moral philosophy at the University of St Andrews. After obtaining a law degree at Edinburgh University, with characteristic panache she studied dance at the Laban Centre in London, and always said that dance and law informed and balanced her practice.

Through a mutual friend, she met Paul Harkin in Edinburgh in 1998. They married the next year in Ullapool and had a son, Oscar. Roanne and Paul separated in 2004.

Roanne had a gift for helping to realise the dreams of others, through the quality of her listening, her practical and systematic thinking and her generosity. Her belief in people transformed the sense of what was possible for many individuals, including me. We met in 2003 when I was working at Battersea arts centre. She had become director of the Jerwood foundation in 1998. Among its many music and art grants, it gave £25,000 that enabled Louise Blackwell, Sarah Golding and me to launch the theatre company Fuel.

Among her other roles, Roanne was founding director of Mission Models Money and The Work Room, vice-chair of Scottish Ballet and a board member of Sistema Scotland. She received an Angel award from the International Society for the Performing Arts in 2004, for innovative and spectacular work across the artistic spectrum.

Diagnosed with cancer in 2015, she never lost her love of learning or her passion for people. Her enthusiasm and joie de vivre were irresistible.

She is survived by her partner, Mike, by Oscar, and by her parents and brothers.