Consulting support for community foundations
Operational and financial leadership for foundations navigating growth, transition, or change, from someone who has served as COO inside one.
Former Chief Operating Officer, Greater New Orleans Foundation.
An operator built for mission-driven organizations.
My career has followed a consistent thread: join organizations doing important work, and build the financial and operational infrastructure that lets them grow. I started as a Teach For America corps member in St. Louis, then became founding COO of ReNEW Charter School Management in New Orleans, scaling the organization from 3 to 200+ employees and building its financial systems from scratch. I later founded Whetstone Education, an ed-tech company that grew to $3.5M in annual revenue serving 1,200+ schools before being acquired by SchoolMint in 2020.
From there I moved into the public sector. As Chief of Staff to New Orleans' Chief Administrative Officer, I helped manage a $536M operating budget across 45 city departments and drove $15.5M in measurable operational value. As COO of Orleans Parish School Board, I oversaw $500M in financials and a $1.8B facilities portfolio while leading the district's expansion from 30 to 80+ schools in under two years.
Most recently, I served as Chief Operating Officer of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, where I managed $600M in financial functions, led a full technology modernization across Salesforce and Sage Intacct, and built the digital infrastructure that put millions in COVID relief funds into the hands of 1,000+ nonprofits when it was needed most.
I now work directly with community foundations that need a trusted partner, not a big firm, to strengthen their operations, navigate financial complexity, and build the infrastructure that lets their mission actually scale.
By The Numbers
Track Record
What I Offer
Services
Focused expertise for community foundations navigating growth, transition, or operational complexity.
Financial Infrastructure & Systems
Designing or modernizing financial operations, reporting structures, and technology stacks, including CRM and accounting system transitions like Salesforce and Sage Intacct. The goal is giving leadership the financial visibility to make confident decisions.
Interim / Fractional COO Support
Stepping in during leadership transitions, growth phases, or capacity gaps to keep operations running without interruption. Available on a part-time or project basis, with no full-time hire required.
Organizational Growth & Restructuring
Redesigning systems, roles, and operational infrastructure to support rapid scaling, drawing on experience growing organizations from handful-of-people startups to 200+ employee operations. Built for foundations that are outgrowing their current structure.
Crisis Response & Continuity Planning
Building and stress-testing operational systems that hold up when sudden demand or disruption hits. Informed by real experience distributing millions in direct COVID relief to 1,000+ individuals and nonprofits under time pressure.
Board & Governance Engagement
Supporting Finance, Investment, and Audit committee work, from preparing board materials to navigating governance structures through periods of change. Comfortable working directly with board leadership on sensitive financial and strategic matters.
Executive Search
Helping foundations identify, evaluate, and recruit senior operational and financial leadership, with a practitioner's eye for what the role actually requires. Particularly well-suited for CFO, COO, and Director-level searches where operational fit matters as much as credentials.
A Different Kind of Consultant
Most consultants working with community foundations come from strategy, fundraising, or program backgrounds. They can tell you what your organization should do. What's harder to find is someone who has actually run the operations and finance function inside a community foundation at the executive level, having owned the financial function, managed the audit, overseen the grants database migration, and reported financials to the board. That's the experience I bring. The advice isn't theoretical. It comes from having done the work.
I've also led through the kind of large-scale organizational change that most foundations will never face but some inevitably will, including managing a district's growth from 30 to 80+ schools, consolidating operations across dozens of departments with a half-billion-dollar budget, and building systems under pressure that had to work the first time. When community foundations are navigating growth, leadership change, or operational strain, I know what it actually takes to stabilize and move forward, not from a slide deck, but from experience.
My Approach
A collaborative, direct approach.
I sit in the room.
I don't just hand you a thick report and walk away. I engage deeply with your team, sitting in on the hard conversations to untangle the knots together.
Direct and honest.
Time is your most valuable asset. I provide clear, candid assessments of your operational and financial reality, without the corporate jargon.
Capacity building.
The goal of every engagement is to leave your organization stronger. I build systems and train your staff so you can eventually thrive without me.
Get In Touch
Let's start a conversation.
Whether you have a specific project in mind or just want to talk through what your foundation is navigating, I'm glad to connect.
I typically respond within 1–2 business days.