I’ve spent 20 years in the social sector, supporting both foundations and nonprofits to improve practices. I was the Program Director at Listen4Good, a national capacity-building initiative focused on client feedback loops for direct service nonprofits. I also served as an interim Evaluation & Learning Director at the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula and at The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Prior to that, I was the first Organizational Learning Officer at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. There I focused on supporting our staff in monitoring and learning to improve. I facilitated internal learning across our six program areas, learning externally from experts, and encouraged conversations about things that went wrong in our work and what we could do differently next time. I worked to design and improve many of our processes -- from how we capture insights on grants to how we orient and provide ongoing development for program officers. Prior to the Organizational Learning role, I worked in Grants Management and Knowledge Management, collaborating closely with IT to develop shared data standards and to implement online tools and processes.

Before my time at the Hewlett Foundation, I was a management consultant at TDC in Boston. There I supported the After-School for All Partnership’s School Sites Initiative, which focused on expanding the number of children served in after-school programs. I also worked with a variety of Boston-area nonprofits to develop strategic plans and conduct community assessments. Other stints along the way include working at Dove Consulting (now Hitachi Consulting), conducting market research for banking and beverage companies; at Hasbro toy company in their Corporate Social Responsibility department; at Oxfam America in Finance and Operations; and at Cone, Inc., a cause marketing firm. I’ve volunteered for a number of organizations over the years, including Mercy Ships, where I spent a year as a K-8 teacher while docked in Sierra Leone and the Gambia. I currently serve on the board of Fresh Lifelines for Youth (FLY), which works to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline, supporting youth involved in the juvenile justice system, and those most at risk, to change their lives.

I have a B.A. in Asian Studies and History from Williams College and an M.B.A. from the International Business School at Brandeis. A native California Bay Area resident, I lived many years in Boston and spent a number of summers in Taiwan. I speak conversational Mandarin Chinese and a smattering of French and Japanese.