Boldly Go leadership
Sharp minds. Big hearts.
founders
Meet our founders who go above and beyond to deliver results.
Jeff Kutash
Co-founder and Managing Partner
Jeff Kutash
highlights
- Former Executive Director, Peter Kiewit Foundation: $450m place-based private funder.
- Former McKinsey consultant, built and led foundation strategy group’s San Francisco office and education practice.
- Six years of on-the-ground education experience as a teacher in the South Bronx and a nonprofit director in Harlem.
bio
Jeff Kutash started his career as a Teach For America corps member, teaching math in at a public bilingual middle school in New York City. His students were all recent immigrants, and while he was teaching them math, they were teaching him the importance of hard work to overcome adversity and achieve big dreams. He left the classroom to revive the Harlem Educational Activities Fund, a dormant nonprofit serving youth in Harlem and Washington Heights. Jeff grew a small mentoring program into a college success pipeline that helped hundreds of youth finish high school, go to college, and get a degree. One of his proudest moments was when an early participant in his program finished college and became a teacher in the neighborhood she grew up in.
Between creating college prep programs and visiting students in their homes to help with college applications, Jeff married his college sweetheart, Jessica. Together, they went off to Harvard Business School — Jessica to advance her career in marketing, and Jeff to pick up a business skill set he thought was needed in the social sector. After getting his MBA, Jeff joined McKinsey & Company where he worked with financial services, tech, manufacturing, and retail clients. Helping Fortune 500 companies with their most critical business issues honed Jeff’s problem solving, communication, and client service skills, which he took with him to join The Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm that helps funders and nonprofits create social impact.
In 2005, Jeff was recruited by The Seed Foundation to help open public college preparatory boarding schools in California. Jeff secured major pledges from donors, gained school district approvals, built broad community support, and ran legislation to fund the schools. And while the California budget crisis at the time put the project on hold, the groundwork was laid for The SEED School of Los Angeles, which will open its doors in 2022.
Jeff then joined Foundation Strategy Group (FSG), a nonprofit consulting firm focused on effective philanthropy and social impact. It was the perfect opportunity to combine his background in consulting with his entrepreneurial mindset. For the next seven years, Jeff led FSG’s San Francisco office, growing the team from two to over 30 professionals. He launched and built FSG’s national education practice, overseeing scores of consulting engagements with leading corporations, foundations, nonprofits, school districts, and government agencies. A few projects he is particularly proud of include helping reestablish New Orleans’ education system after hurricane Katrina and leading a statewide effort to reform New York’s juvenile justice system.
In 2013, Jeff and his family moved to Omaha, Nebraska where he became the CEO of the Peter Kiewit Foundation, a place-based private funder. Jeff crafted the foundation’s first strategic plan focused on education-to-career pathways, economic opportunity, and thriving and inclusive communities; transformed the foundation’s approach to grantmaking and evaluation; and retooled all operational functions. Jeff was responsible for $25-30M in annual grantmaking and led the foundation’s programmatic initiatives, community engagement, and operations. In that role, Jeff helped catalyze a $300M riverfront redevelopment, launch a regional transportation plan, and develop a statewide initiative on college success. After seven years at the foundation, Jeff left to found Boldly Go Philanthropy.
Jeff holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. He has served on the boards of the Greater Omaha Chamber, College Possible, National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector, and Great California Public Schools.
Jeff speaks around the country and writes on topics of effective philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, urban core and rural community development, effecting social change, and education. He is author of multiple papers and case studies including “Structuring Post-Secondary Scholarships to Increase Student Success”, “The School Turnaround Field Guide”, and “Practices From the Portfolio: Case Studies on Effective Education Practices”.
Jeff and Jessica are the proud parents of three awesome kids – Gabriel, Theara, and Holden. As a family, they love to travel, mountain bike, snowboard, and hike. In those rare moments when he is not working or coaching his kids’ sports teams, Jeff can be found curled up on a couch with a great book.
Kyle Peterson
Co-founder and Managing Partner
Kyle Peterson
HIGHLIGHTS
- Former Executive Director, Walton Family Foundation: over $600 million in grantmaking per year.
- Built and led Foundation Strategy Group (FSG) for 14 years: advisor to philanthropists around the world.
- Ten years of global development experience in Africa: on-the-ground training for impact.
BIO
Kyle Peterson joined the Peace Corps right out of college and fell in love twice – first with his wife, a fellow volunteer, and the second time with the adventure of making a difference. While in Sierra Leone with the Peace Corps, Kyle helped farmers plant over 100,000 oil palm trees, witnessed a rich culture and heritage, experienced unjust inequities, and was inspired by everyday heroes.
The experience sparked an interest in Africa, international development, and solving big problems through business-like approaches. After getting business and public policy master degrees at the University of Texas, Kyle joined Population Services International (PSI), a non-governmental organization pushing the boundaries on social marketing, a new approach to social change at the time. Kyle went to Rwanda, six months after the end of the country’s genocide, as country director to restart PSI’s program shut-down during the war. He established a family planning and HIV/AIDS prevention program. Two years later, he started PSI’s social marketing program in Zimbabwe, the epicenter for HIV in Southern Africa in the mid-1990s. Kyle launched a number of novel health programs through the private sector — including a network of HIV counseling and testing sites and insecticide treated mosquito bed nets — that averted thousands of cases of HIV/AIDS and malaria.
Interested in private sector approaches, he signed on with Monitor Consulting to learn the strategy-making ropes, moving from Zimbabwe to Boston. He was soon in Wichita managing a competitiveness study for the firm’s founder, Harvard Business Professor, Michael Porter. He went back to Rwanda and started a multi-year project advising President Kagame and the Cabinet on the country’s economic strategy.
In 2001, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer had just started a new type of consulting organization — Foundation Strategy Group (FSG) — to help philanthropists be more effective. Kyle helped to launch and lead FSG over the next 14 years. While at FSG, Kyle built the global development and health practice areas and led over 150 consulting engagements for foundations, companies, and nonprofits. He also served on FSG’s board of directors and helped with big idea pieces, such as “Catalytic Philanthropy,” “Collective Impact,” and “Shared Value.”
The Walton family was searching for a new leader of their family philanthropy and Kyle signed on as the head of the 30 year-old Walton Family Foundation, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, in 2016. In the role, he oversaw the transformation of one of the nation’s largest private foundations to support $600 million in annual grant making, across education, environment, and economic development program areas. He also supported the philanthropic projects of all Walton family members, which included establishing new charitable vehicles. He helped to create a think tank serving the Heartland and was the founding board chair for two groundbreaking charter school facility revolving loan funds. He strengthened the profile of the organization with a new mission and vision and values; led a diversity, equity, and inclusion assessment and organizational change effort; and built new collaborative relationships with other funders.
Kyle has a BA in international studies from the American University, an MBA from the McCombs School of Business (University of Texas), and an MPA from the LBJ School of Public Affairs (University of Texas). He has served on several boards during the last decade, including Foundation Strategy Group, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and the Global Health Council. He is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Kyle is a frequent speaker on family and institutional philanthropy, corporate social engagement, and international development. He is author of several field reports including “Ahead of the Curve: Insights for the International NGO of the Future” and “Competing by Saving Lives: How Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Companies Create Shared Value in Global Health” and articles such as “Lobbying for Good” featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. He contributed the chapter “Social Enterprise and Innovation in Emerging Markets” with Leslie Crutchfield in the 2016 book, Innovation in Emerging Markets.
When not working, Kyle loves to travel, hike, and mountain bike with his wife, Maury, and teenage son, Finn.
advisors
Meet our advisors whose networks, knowledge, and expertise helps us raise our game.
Julie Fisher Cummings
Trustee, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation
Julie Fisher Cummings
Trustee, Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation
Julie is a philanthropic leader who was born in Detroit and is dedicated to giving back to the communities where she has lived. She recently returned to school and received a graduate degree in Social Policy from Columbia University in New York. Currently, she is teaching a graduate course on Child Policy at the University of Miami in Florida. Julie is dedicated to serving her local and national community. Nationally, she is a Presidential appointee and board member of the Corporation for National and Community Service. She has served on numerous boards, including Children’s Hospital of Michigan, Community Foundation for Southeastern Michigan, the United Way of Southeastern Michigan and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. As a native of Michigan, she assumed the mantle of leadership for a number of key organizations, including the Detroit Arts Commission, and the Michigan Community Service Commission. Passionate about advancing the field of philanthropy, she helped create programming and retreats for family philanthropy in her tenure on the board of the Council of Michigan Foundations. Most recently, she joined the board of the National Center for Family Philanthropy. For the last five years, Julie has served as the managing trustee of her family’s foundation, whose other members include her mother and four siblings. The Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation supports work that strengthens families and communities in need. In Detroit, the Foundation concentrates its efforts in the Jewish community and on early childhood development in the Brightmoor neighborhood. The Foundation is also committed to fostering AIDS awareness and to supporting the major cultural institutions on which the rebirth of this city depends.
Leslie Crutchfield
Executive Director, Georgetown University’s Business for Impact Initiative
Leslie Crutchfield
Executive Director, Georgetown University’s Business for Impact Initiative
Leslie is an author, educator, social change expert and Executive Director of Business for Impact at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Business for Impact’s core value is that companies can be a powerful force for good in the world, and the center delivers world-class education, student experience, and cross-sector collaborations for people, planet and profit. Leslie’s latest book is How Change Happens: Why Some Movements Succeed While Others Don’t, noted in The New York Review of Books as a blueprint for groups inspired to take action on today’s major causes. Leslie also co-authored the bestselling Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits – recognized by The Economist on its Best Books of the Year list – and Do More than Give. She teaches corporate social responsibility in Georgetown’s MBA program and nonprofit leadership on LinkedIn Learning. Leslie previously was managing director at Ashoka, the global venture fund for social entrepreneurs, and co-founded a national nonprofit social enterprise in her 20s. Leslie has contributed to Fortune, Forbes, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and Stanford Social Innovation Review, and has appeared on programs such as ABC, FOX, NPR and PBS. She has volunteered on SEED Foundation and Kiva’s boards and with Crossroads Africa. She holds an MBA and BA from Harvard, and resides in the Washington, D.C. region.
Lisa Hamilton
President and CEO, Annie E. Casey Foundation
Lisa Hamilton
President and CEO, Annie E. Casey Foundation
Lisa Hamilton is the president and chief executive officer of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private philanthropy dedicated to building a brighter future for children, families, and communities in the United States. Prior to becoming president and CEO, Hamilton was the Foundation’s executive vice president and chief program officer, overseeing investments to promote community change, economic opportunity for families and public system reform. She also guided efforts to strengthen the social sector and encourage the take-up of effective strategies. Hamilton previously served as vice president of external affairs, leading Casey’s efforts to provide data, analysis, research, and policy solutions to help all children realize their potential. Before joining the Foundation, Hamilton worked at UPS for 14 years in various roles, including president of the UPS Foundation and vice president of corporate public relations. Hamilton serves on the boards of the Baltimore Community Foundation, Baltimore’s Promise, East Baltimore Development Inc., Living Cities, and StriveTogether. An Atlanta native, she earned a law degree from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in commerce from the University of Virginia.
Eric Kelly
President, Quantum Foundation
Eric Kelly
President, Quantum Foundation
Eric Kelly has a Bachelor of Science degree in Communications from Florida State University and a Masters of Nonprofit Management from Florida Atlantic University. He has completed a combined 36-hours of Masters Coursework in Biblical Studies at Moody Bible Institute and Southeastern Theological Seminary. He is the President of Quantum Foundation—a West Palm Beach-based health corporation that manages a $150 million investment fund. As President, Eric is responsible for formulating the strategy to deploy a multi-million dollar grant portfolio of funding to qualified organizations in Palm Beach County to improve health outcomes. Eric is a community leader who works across the business, not-for-profit, and public sectors to ensure community improvement initiatives are sustainable and offer systemic solutions. Eric often challenges the historical philanthropic assumption of “doing charity” in an effort to create effective drivers for equitable change. Eric is a member of the Board of Directors of Florida Philanthropic Network, Southeastern Council of Foundations, Economic Council of Palm Beach County, and the Business Development Board of Palm Beach County. Eric Kelly lives in West Palm Beach with his wife, Kirra and four children: Madison, Mason, Miles, Malachi and family dog, Meadow.
Jocelyn Sargent
Former Executive Director, Hyams Foundation
Jocelyn Sargent
Former Executive Director, Hyams Foundation
Jocelyn Sargent is a political scientist and institutional change agent with over two decades of experience advancing democracy and social justice agendas. A co-founder of the Center for Social Inclusion, now a component of Race Forward, she has spent the bulk of her career devoted to social equity, civil society, leadership development, and promoting social justice through the empowerment of marginalized communities. While at the Open Society Foundation and then later at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, she designed philanthropic and government programs to advance economic and social equity. Most recently, Ms. Sargent, the former Executive Director of the Hyams Foundation, was recognized for her outstanding sectoral leadership on issues of racial equity and social justice in 2017 by the Boston Business Journal and in 2018 by the Boston Magazine. As a researcher, Ms. Sargent has developed and directed large-scale impact evaluations of major philanthropic programs of the Ford Foundation, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and Rockefeller Foundation, as well as various local community foundations. She has designed research strategies that informed the philanthropic sector’s support for strengthening community organizing and grassroots advocacy for social justice. By virtue of her humble extended family roots in the US South, Ms. Sargent possesses a deep personal passion for a fair and just society. She has taught university courses, written reports, and presented conference papers pertaining to racial and economic justice; health inequities; social networks; and public policy targeting low-income populations and communities of color.
Rajiv Vinnakota
President, The Institute for Citizens & Scholars
Rajiv Vinnakota
President, The Institute for Citizens & Scholars
Raj Vinnakota is president of The Institute for Citizens & Scholars. The Institute prepares leaders and engages networks of people and organizations to meet urgent education challenges. The overarching goal is to shape an informed, productively engaged, and hopeful citizenry. Raj is former executive vice president at the Aspen Institute where he launched the Youth & Engagement Programs division to work directly with young people ages 14 to 24 in urban and rural communities nationwide. Prior to joining the Aspen Institute, Raj was the co-founder and CEO of The SEED Foundation, a non-profit managing the nation’s first network of public, college-preparatory boarding schools for underserved children. For his work at The SEED Foundation, Raj and his business partner Eric Adler have been named Washingtonian of the Year by Washingtonian magazine, are recipients of the Manhattan Institute’s Social Entrepreneurship Award, and are recipients of Oprah Winfrey’s “Use Your Life” Award. Raj attended Princeton University, from which he received a degree in Molecular Biology, as well as certificate of studies from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy. Raj’s first job after college was as a management consultant with Mercer Management Consulting. Raj is a board director for a public company, Colfax Corporation (NYSE: CFX). He is a former trustee and executive committee member for Princeton University. In 2009, he received the Woodrow Wilson Award, the highest honor that Princeton bestows on an undergraduate alumnus. Raj is an Echoing Green fellow and an Ashoka fellow. He is married and has one daughter and one cat. He loves basketball, working out and learning from his daughter.
Atiya Weiss
Executive Director, The Burke Foundation
Atiya Weiss
Executive Director, The Burke Foundation
As Executive Director, Atiya leads the Burke Foundation’s efforts to invest in the most promising and transformative programs and policies that foster the health, well-being, and resilience of children and families in New Jersey. She oversees the development and execution of its strategies to pursue targeted initiatives and partnerships focused on healthy pregnancies and births, healthy parent-child relationships, and high-quality early learning and care.
Before joining the Burke Foundation, Atiya was Executive Director at JP Morgan’s Philanthropy Center advising charitable trusts and family foundations on strategy, impact, and legacy for five years. At JP Morgan, she supported the development and launch of the Global Health Investment Fund, a $100 million social impact fund to advance the development of new drugs, vaccines and diagnostics, in partnership with the Gates Foundation. From 2001-2011, she led the Pfizer Foundation’s global health portfolio and spearheaded flagship programs, including Pfizer Global Health Fellows and Mobilize Against Malaria.
Atiya is interested in breaking silos and building coalitions, centered around community voices, to make systems change and build a cycle of opportunity across generations. She is passionate about collaborating with leaders across sectors to tackle the social problems facing underserved children and their families, and firmly believes that effective partnerships can unlock the potential of communities and create meaningful, lasting change.
Atiya graduated with degrees in biology and public policy from Brown University and has a Masters in Public Health in epidemiology from Columbia University. She serves as trustee with the Council of New Jersey Grantmakers. She lives in Princeton with her husband and two sons.
Clare Woodcraft
Executive Director, Cambridge Judge Business School Centre for Strategic Philanthropy
Clare Woodcraft
Executive Director, Cambridge Judge Business School Centre for Strategic Philanthropy
Clare Woodcraft has over 25 years of experience working in the field of socio-economic development and philanthropy in emerging markets. She is the former CEO of Emirates Foundation, the national foundation of the UAE, where she led the organization’s transition from traditional grant-making to the model of Venture Philanthropy. During her time as CEO, she was elected as the Chair of the Arab Foundations Forum, a regional network of foundations where she helped to promote the model of strategic philanthropy. Earlier she served as the Deputy Director of Shell Foundation, a leader in the philanthropic sector whose business model entails building scalable social enterprises to address global development challenges, otherwise known as enterprise-based philanthropy. Prior to this she was the Regional Director of Communications for Royal Dutch Shell in the Middle East and North Africa overseeing the company’s social investment and its transition into a more strategic focused portfolio in 14 countries. Earlier, Woodcraft headed Visa International’s public affairs arm in emerging markets working closely with governments in over 90 markets, to deploy social investment for public good with a focus on financial systems and electronic payments. Previously she worked as the Finance Editor of Middle East Economic Survey, a specialized energy journal reporting on socio-economic development related to oil economies. She writes and speaks extensively on the paradigm shift in the philanthropic sector and is a vocal champion of Venture Philanthropy. Woodcraft is a fluent Arabic and French speaker with a BA in Modern Languages and a MSc in Development from LSE.
partners
We build the exact right team for each client. To do so, we draw upon our people and a small group of best-in-class strategic partners with significant expertise and experience in issues such as education, environment, health, economic opportunity, and racial equity; and deep functional expertise in impact investing, scenario planning, evaluation, legal services, and strategic communications.