17 Years at the Intersection of Education, Workforce, and Partnerships
I am a senior nonprofit leader focused on building the cross-sector relationships and institutional partnerships that create real career pathways for underrepresented students. This is what I have always done, and it is the work I want to keep doing at greater scale.
Where you grow up should not determine where you end up. That has been my North Star for 17 years, and it has shaped every role I have taken and every partnership I have built.
I am an NYC native, born in the Bronx and raised in Harlem. I was a first-generation professional who struggled to navigate the handoff between high school, college, and career. I know firsthand how confusing it can be when pathways are unclear and social capital is unevenly distributed. That lived experience is not just context. It is a design tool. It pushes me to build structures that make it easier for young people to move into family-sustaining careers with confidence.
My career has lived at the intersection of education, workforce development, and economic mobility. I have seen how transformational it is when those systems actually connect for young people. I have also seen what happens when they do not. That gap is what drives me.
I build the partnerships and funding strategies that translate organizational vision into real opportunities for learners. In my current role as VP of Partnerships at Making Waves Education Foundation, I serve as our primary relationship-builder on the ground as we incubate a new regional intermediary focused on bridging the gap between grades 11-14 and high-wage careers.
My work spans three connected areas:
Cross-Sector Partnerships. I identify, cultivate, and close partnerships with employers, corporations, government agencies, and philanthropic foundations. I design the engagement strategies that bring those relationships to life, so our vision translates into real commitments: internships, mentorship, scholarships, credentials, and jobs. I understand the language of corporate HR and the language of philanthropy, and I use both to build bridges that move resources toward students and communities that need them most.
Institutional Development and Fundraising. I lead our organization's external funding strategy, building partnerships with foundations, corporate funders, and government sources. I translate complex program models into compelling narratives that resonate with diverse funders. My proposals do not just win. They set up programs for successful implementation by grounding outcomes in realistic logic models and honest evaluation frameworks.
Workforce and Career Pathway Design. I co-design structured programs that go beyond check-writing and event-based engagement. I believe meaningful progress happens when funders and partners intentionally foster collaboration across sectors rather than operating in isolation. I consider this work from a programmatic lens, a data-informed lens, and through the perspective of someone who navigated these systems as a young person.
I have spent 17 years building things that work and learning what does not. A few examples that reflect how I approach this work:
At Making Waves, I took an early-stage relationship with a Bay Area law firm and turned it into a multi-layered pre-law pathway. What started as one contact and a single field trip became a mock trial team coached by their attorneys, paid summer internships for high school students, 1:1 mentorships between attorneys and college students who had won pre-law scholarships, and a 60% increase in the firm's funding commitment over 15 months. That is what I mean when I talk about moving from transactional to transformational.
At Teach For America Northern California, I managed a multi-million-dollar institutional portfolio and re-engineered our approach to partnerships with foundations, corporations, and public funders across the Bay Area, Sacramento, and Stockton. Over three years, the portfolio raised more than $7.3 million, reversed stagnation, and built a more diversified funder base. Funders explicitly cited our proposal and reporting quality as reasons they increased or extended their commitments.
At Next Generation Scholars, I increased the organization's total fundraising by 63% and secured multiple multi-year six-figure grants through institutional development partnerships with foundations, corporate funders, and government sources.
Across all of it, I have built the internal infrastructure that supports this work at scale: CRM pipelines, engagement systems, prospect research processes, and reporting frameworks that help teams track and steward relationships without losing the human element.
I am looking for my next senior leadership opportunity. I want a VP or SVP role where I can bring the full range of what I do: partnership development, institutional fundraising, workforce strategy, earned revenue design, and team leadership.
I am drawn to organizations that are serious about equity and outcomes, whether that is a nationally-scaled education nonprofit, a workforce intermediary, a corporate social impact function, or a philanthropic organization funding this kind of work. I want to be somewhere that the question is not whether to do it right, but how to do it at greater scale.
I am Bay Area-based and have been for over a decade. That said, I care more about the mission than the geography. If you are building something in this space, or know someone who is, I would love to connect.