Date: 2025-01-14 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00004055
Impact Investing Infrastructure
The Social Impact Exchange
The Social Impact Exchange ... its organizational structure and its key people
Burgess COMMENTARY
Peter Burgess
The Social Impact Exchange ... its organizational structure and its key people
The Social Impact Exchange was launched by the Growth Philanthropy Network (GPN), in partnership with Duke University - Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society (CSPCS) and its Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE). Together, these organizations are supporting the development of the Exchange.
Growth Philanthropy Network
- Alexander Rossides – President
- Karen Epstein – Vice President
- David Fleit - Program Assistant
- Simon Jawitz - Executive Advisor
- Nicole Kindred – Program, Communications, Technology Coordinator
- Cynthia Massarsky – Vice President and Director, Social Impact Exchange
- Tamara Schweitzer Raben - Knowledge Management Associate
- Anne Sherman - Vice President, Nonprofit Strategy
- Monica Ward - Nonprofit Initiatives Manager
- Robin Willner - Vice President, Funder Engagement
Duke University - Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, Sanford School of Public Policy
- Joel Fleishman – Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies and the Director of the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy, and the Professions
- Edward Skloot - Director, Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society and Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Studies
Duke University - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE)
- J. Gregory Dees – Professor of the Practice of Social Entrepreneurship and Co-Founder of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship
- Paul Bloom - Faculty Director and Adjunct Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and Marketing
- Cathy Clark - Adjunct Assistant Professor
- Matthew Nash - Managing Director
Growth Philanthropy Network
Karen Schub Epstein came to GPN back in 2005. She had previously worked in the private sector where she focused on operations, finance and accounting. Karen is a CPA who started her career in public accounting at Ernst and Young. She left to join Bohbot Media and Entertainment, a children’s entertainment company then contemplating an initial public offering. After guiding them through that process, Karen joined The Interpublic Group of Companies where she spent the next eight years in various roles, including CFO of an international sports and entertainment company, and Vice President of a $500 million holding company which she helped launch. During her time at Interpublic, she focused on mergers and acquisitions, investor relations, financial analysis, human resources, systems implementations, business development and strategy.
Ms. Epstein devotes considerable time to volunteer activities. She is currently the Treasurer of the Chatsworth Avenue PTA and on the Board of the Mamaroneck Schools Foundation. She was previously the Chair of the Steering Committee of the Larchmont Temple Nursery School and served on the Board of the Larchmont Newcomers Club, in addition to having chaired numerous UJA events. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in accounting and psychology, and graduated from the Executive MBA program at Columbia University with honors.
David Fleit,
Program Assistant
David Fleit joined Growth Philanthropy Network in September 2012 as Program Assistant. Prior to a shift to the nonprofit sector, he worked in publicity for Astralwerks Records and music licensing for EMI Music. He brings a range of experiences at both nonprofit and philanthropic institutions to support Growth Philanthropy Network’s mission. He has volunteered and interned with several nonprofit organizations dedicated to providing music and arts programming to underserved communities, most recently as a development intern at the VH1 Save The Music Foundation. Additionally, an internship with the Andrea & Charles Bronfman Philanthropies exposed him to the world of grant-making and philanthropic wealth management. David received a Masters in Public Administration from Baruch College concentrating in Nonprofit Administration as well as a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Law from Binghamton University.
Nicole Kindred joined GPN in August of 2010 and brings a wealth of experience in both in the nonprofit and private sectors. She has worked and volunteered for a variety of non-profit organizations around the world that are dedicated towards environmental, social, and economic development and has a great deal of interest in the potential of social media and online tools in sharing and growing non-profits. Prior to joining GPN, she worked in Vancouver, BC with an organization dedicated to networking and bringing together non-profit organizations and individuals interested in international development. She also volunteered extensively with Oxfam Canada as the Advocacy and Outreach Campaign Coordinator and is currently an organizer with Oxfam Action Corps NYC. Nicole serves on the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network NYC Board of Directors as the Vice Chair of Technology and is a member of the EcoHealth Alliance Young Professional's Council.
Nicole holds a BA in International Relations from Boston University and a Master’s of International Development and Environmental Analysis from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.
Cynthia Massarsky,
Vice President and Director, Social Impact Exchange
Cynthia W. Massarsky comes to GPN with a 35-year history in the nonprofit sector, where she has been at the forefront of the social enterprise and entrepreneurship movement. Most recently, she directed the Yale/Goldman Sachs National Business Plan Competition for Nonprofit Organizations - a program she created for the Pew Charitable Trusts, Goldman Sachs Foundation, and Yale School of Management. The program involved three annual competitions that provided significant monetary awards and consulting services to leading nonprofit organizations in social enterprise. In all, she managed an operation that evaluated more than 1,500 entrants, selected 24 award recipients, supervised 470 evaluators and consultants, designed a website of resources for the field, and held three annual conferences attended by more than 1,200 nonprofits, grantmakers, and academic scholars.
Ms. Massarsky is also principal of CWM Marketing Group, a consulting firm she founded 18 years ago. Specializing in marketing, new business development, and evaluation services for nonprofits, foundations, and corporate philanthropy, Ms. Massarsky has served clients including Save the Children; Carnegie Corporation of New York, Covenant House; The Pew Charitable Trusts; Bank Street College; AmeriCorps; Ford Foundation; Families and Work Institute; Goldman Sachs Foundation; Aspen Institute, Association of Junior Leagues International; Nonprofit Finance Fund; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts; AmFAR; The Rockefeller Foundation; and U.S. Fund for UNICEF. Previously, she held positions with Scholastic, Inc., Marlo Thomas' Free To Be Foundation at the Ms Foundation for Women, New Ventures (a consulting firm that guided nonprofits on earned income ventures), and The Foundation Center.
Ms. Massarsky has a number of publications to her credit, most recently, 'Coming of Age: Social Enterprise Reaches Its Tipping Point' in Research on Social Entrepreneurship: Understanding and Contributing to an Emerging Field (ARNOVA Occasional Paper Series, Vol. III, June 2006); Generating and Sustaining Nonprofit Earned Income: A Guide to Successful Enterprise Strategies (Jossey-Bass Publishing, April 2004); and 'Enterprise Strategies for Generating Revenue' in The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management (October 2004).
Ms. Massarsky earned a bachelor's degree from Simmons College and an M.B.A. from Cornell University.
Tamara Schweitzer Raben,
Knowledge Management Associate
Tamara Schweitzer Raben joined GPN in December 2011 as the Knowledge Management Associate. She comes to the nonprofit sector from a journalism and editorial background, and brings several years of experience writing about the social impact space for leading online and print publications. Prior to GPN, Tamara was the executive editor of Socialbrite.org, a website that provides nonprofits with the resources to make better use of social media to advance their missions and become more effective organizations. In her role at Socialbrite.org, Tamara worked closely with a variety of growing NPOs and helped guide them to relevant resources on the site, as well as provided them with a platform to share best practices.
Additionally, Tamara is a contributing writer for Dowser.org, a website dedicated to publishing solutions-focused stories in the social change community. Tamara’s media background also includes a year working with start-ups and social ventures as an independent communications strategist. Tamara brings to GPN a deep knowledge of the private sector; she started her career as a staff reporter for Inc. Magazine, where she covered entrepreneurship and small business for both the magazine and website.
Tamara received a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, and a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Michigan. She is excited to be playing a role in knowledge building for the social impact sector.
Anne Sherman,
Vice President, Nonprofit Strategy
Anne Sherman is Vice President, Nonprofit Strategy at Growth Philanthropy Network. Before GPN, she was Director of Strategy at TCC Group, a consultancy that assists nonprofits, foundations, and corporate community involvement programs. Prior to TCC Group, she was community initiatives manager at Minneapolis Way To Grow, a citywide school-readiness initiative. Sherman holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs. Her volunteer work includes serving as chair of the governing body of the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and as a member of the board of SCO Family of Services. She also serves on the selection committee of the New York Community Trust-New York Magazine Nonprofit Excellence Awards. Sherman is the co-author of Building Nonprofit Capacity: A Guide to Managing Change Through Organizational Lifecycles, published in 2011 by Jossey-Bass.
Monica Ward,
Nonprofit Initiatives Manager
Monica Ward joined GPN in August of 2012 as the Nonprofit Initiatives Manager. Prior to GPN she was the Deputy Director of the YouthBuild Newark Intermediary Initiative, where she managed the organization's replication efforts in New Jersey, as well as assisted with their strategic growth plan. Before YouthBuild, Ms. Ward spent over 12 years in the nonprofit sector working for national nonprofits and intermediaries, such as the Corporation for Supportive Housing and the Council of State Governments on a range of social issues including mental health, substance abuse, criminal justice and housing. Ms. Ward holds a Master's in Public Policy from The Johns Hopkins University and a B.A in Public Policy from Duke University.
Robin Willner,
Vice President, Funder Engagement
Robin Willner is Vice President, Funder Engagement at Growth Philanthropy Network, leading the Social Impact Exchange’s Education Working Group and other issue-based initiatives. Most recently, Ms Willner served as Vice President, Global Community Initiatives for the IBM Corporation. As an executive in corporate citizenship, she was responsible for bringing IBM’s cutting edge technology and talent to bear on social and educational problems to improve the quality of life in communities around the world. She managed all of IBM’s school partnerships and programs, most recently developing the innovative 9-14 school for IT careers, P-TECH, that has gained national recognition and is being replicated by Mayors Bloomberg and Emanuel in NYC and Chicago. She oversaw a range of global philanthropic and leadership development programs, including international corporate volunteer initiatives (the Corporate Service Corps) , Transition to Teaching and online mentoring programs for students, entrepreneurs and returning veterans. Local economic development and jobs programs under her guidance included the Small Business Toolkit, a partnership with the World Bank’s International Finance Corp as well as adult literacy and training programs. She also managed IBM’s humanitarian response to disasters, coordinating IBM’s response to earthquakes in Japan, Haiti and China, the 9/11 attacks in New York City, the December 2004 tsunami in south Asia, Hurricane Katrina and dozens of others. Ms. Willner joined IBM in March 1994 to design and implement Reinventing Education, a unique philanthropic initiative in K-12 school reform. This $100 million global program grew to include 25 grant partnerships with school districts and states throughout the United States plus projects in twelve other countries, each focusing on a collaborative effort to develop new applications of technology to overcome common barriers to school improvement and increase student achievement.
Prior to joining IBM, Ms. Willner served for three and a half years as Executive Director for Strategic Planning for the New York City Public Schools. In that position, she was the chief policy advisor to Chancellor Joseph A. Fernandez and oversaw all evaluation, research, testing and data collection activities in the nation’s largest school district. She also has extensive experience managing nonprofit organizations conducting advocacy, research and community organizing.
Ms. Willner has served on the Boards of Directors of Grantmakers for Education and the Center for Education Policy and the National Academy of Engineering’s K12 Task Force. A proud New York City resident, she is currently a member of the Boards of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood of NYC and co-chair of the Age-Friendly NYC Commission.
Duke University- Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society, Sanford School of Public Policy
Joel L. Fleishman,
Professor of Law and Public Policy Studies and the Director of the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Center for Ethics, Public Policy, and the Professions at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University.
Professor Fleishman joined the Duke faculty in 1971, was the founding director of what is now the Sanford School of Public Policy, and has served the university as vice president, senior vice president, and first senior vice president. He took part-time leave from Duke from 1993 to 2003 to serve as president of the Atlantic Philanthropic Service Company, the United States program staff of the Atlantic Philanthropies.
He is author, co-author, or editor of numerous books and articles reflecting his long-standing interest in ethics, public policy, and nonprofit organizations, the most recent of which, The Foundation: A Great American Secret—How Private Money is Changing the World, was published in January 2007 by Public Affairs Books and has just been released in an expanded paperback edition.
Fleishman serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the Urban Institute and as a trustee of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; Brandeis University; the Artscroll Mesorah Heritage Foundation; the American Hebrew Academy; and the Partnership for Public Service. He is also chairman of the visiting committee of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2003 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In addition to his academic activities, Fleishman is a member of the board of directors of the Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation. For eight years he wrote a monthly wine column for Vanity Fair magazine.
Edward Skloot,
Director, Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society and Professor of the Practice of Public Policy Studies at the Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University.
In June 2007, Professor Skloot retired as President of the Surdna Foundation, a family foundation headquartered in New York City. He was the first CEO of the $1 billion (2007) foundation and held this position beginning in 1989.
Before coming to Surdna, Skloot was founder and president of New Ventures, a nonprofit consulting firm that assisted other NGOs in earning income as a complement to fund-raising. Begun in 1980, New Ventures was the first organization to promote 'social entrepreneurship'. Skloot wrote the early literature and helped create the field of social enterprise. He has also served in senior posts in state and local government.
Skloot serves on the boards of directors of Independent Sector; Venture Philanthropy Partners, a group of venture capitalists helping youth-serving organizations in the Washington, D.C. region; Citizen Schools, an after-school program located in seven states; the Partnership for Palliative Care; and TROSA, the largest residential therapeutic community in North Carolina. He is a member of the advisory boards of the Bridgespan Group, a nonprofit consulting firm affiliated with Bain and Co., and of the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS Center), Stanford University.
Skloot has written and spoken widely on the subjects of nonprofit management, social venturing, and sectoral leadership. Surdna recently published a compilation of his recent speeches in a book called Beyond the Money. He also was the principal writer and editor of The Nonprofit Entrepreneur, published by the Foundation Center.
Duke University - Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE), Fuqua School of Business
J. Gregory Dees,
Professor of the Practice of Social Entrepreneurship and Co-Founder of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.
Professor Dees has published extensively on social entrepreneurship, including two books with Jed Emerson and Peter Economy, Enterprising Nonprofits and Strategic Tools for Social Entrepreneurs. In 2007, the Aspen Institute and Ashoka recognized his pioneering work with their first Lifetime Achievement award in Social Entrepreneurship Education. Professor Dees previously worked at McKinsey & Company, and taught at the Yale School of Management, at Harvard Business School, where he helped launch the Initiative on Social Enterprise and received the Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching, and at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he served as the Haas Centennial Professor and as founding Co-Director of the Center for Social Innovation. While at Harvard, he interrupted his academic career with a leave of absence to work on entrepreneurial development in Appalachia. He serves on the board of the Bridgespan Group and on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Social Entrepreneurship. He is on numerous advisory boards including Volans, REDF, Aflatoun, Business Leadership for Tomorrow, the Limmat Foundation, and the Social Enterprise Journal.
Paul N. Bloom,
Faculty Director and Adjunct Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and Marketing at Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.
Dr. Bloom leads CASE’s Scaling Social Impact research and teaches a course on Corporate Social Impact Management. He has had a long career researching how the field of marketing can contribute to societal welfare. He has examined how marketing thinking can help to design better consumer protection and antitrust policies and has also done considerable research on social marketing, which involves developing strategies to encourage people to engage in more socially-beneficial behaviors (e.g., healthier living). In recent years, he has been particularly focused on identifying ways to persuade young people to avoid smoking, drinking-and-driving, and unhealthy eating. He is also currently studying how to make partnerships between corporations and social causes more effective at mitigating social problems while at the same time helping the sales and profitability of brands. Throughout his career, Dr. Bloom has encouraged research by business scholars on social issues, chairing well-received conferences on the consumer movement, marketing and public policy, corporate social initiatives, and corporate responses to the obesity crisis. Dr. Bloom is the author or co-author of more than 100 published articles, papers, book chapters, and books; including the award wining article published in the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing for 1987 to 1991 and The Handbook of Marketing and Society (Sage Publications, 2001). He formerly served as Professor of Marketing at the Kenan-Flagler Business School of the University of North Carolina (1984-2006) and held posts at the University of Maryland and the Marketing Science Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in marketing from the Kellogg School of Northwestern University an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.S. degree from Lehigh University.
Catherine Clark,
Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University.
In addition to teaching the elective 'Social Entrepreneurship' at Fuqua, she and Greg Dees are currently co-directing a project exploring business model choices for social entrepreneurs. Cathy has been an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School since 2001 where she created Columbia’s graduate MBA course on social entrepreneurship, and is Founder and Director of Columbia’s Research Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship (RISE). Cathy has served for eight years as Columbia’s Faculty Advisor for the Global Social Venture Competition, a program that recognizes exemplary MBA student social ventures in the nonprofit and for-profit sectors around the world. Previously, she was Founder and Managing Director of the Flatiron Future Fund, a social venture capital fund, and Founder and President of the Flatiron Foundation, both incubated by Flatiron Partners, a JP Morgan Partners affiliate. Formerly, she was Vice President at the Markle Foundation, where she worked with the founder of Sesame Workshop for over seven years to manage the foundation’s portfolio of grants and program-related investments focused on the social benefits of media and communications technologies. She has also consulted to a diverse list of nonprofit and for-profit organizations, foundations and investment groups. Cathy is a founding member of the Standards Advisory Council of B Lab, serves on the advisory boards for two venture capital impact investment funds: SJF Ventures and Commons Capital, and has served on the board of Investors’ Circle, a national membership organization of angel and institutional social investors, since 2001. Cathy holds a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from Columbia Business School. She lives outside of Charlottesville, VA with her husband and two children.
Matthew T.A. Nash,
Managing Director of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
In addition to his development and administrative responsibilities, Matt leads the Fuqua On Board program, founded and directs the Global Consulting Practicum, advises student consulting projects and independent studies, and advises the student run chapter of Net Impact. Matt is also a visiting lecturer at Duke’s Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy, where he co-teaches an undergraduate course in entrepreneurial leadership and social innovation. Matt brings to Fuqua extensive domestic and international social and public sector experience in governance, strategic planning, organization development, performance measurement, business process transformation, and leadership development. Prior to joining the CASE team, he was a senior consultant in strategy and change management with the public sector practice at IBM Business Consulting Services (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting). In this position and previous consulting capacities, Matt served a diverse set of clients ranging from community-based organizations, including a nonprofit resource center, a community housing board, and a disabilities rights coalition, to large agencies such as World Vision, UNICEF and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Previously, Matt led the Leadership Institute at Yale's Center for Public Service and volunteered with the U.S. Peace Corps in Romania. Matt is a graduate of the Yale School of Management (MBA) and Yale College (BA), where he received the graduation prize for public service. A recipient of Vice President Al Gore’s “Hammer Award” for reinventing government, Matt was recently awarded the inaugural 'Member Achievement Award' by Net Impact, the global network of business professionals seeking to use their skills for social, environmental, and economic impact.