Best Practices Leaders

The Center for Social Leadership’s nonprofit leadership programs and conferences are facilitated by Anthony Silard, President of CSL, and over 60 Best Practices Leaders that include the top nonprofit management, social marketing and performance management professors from around the United States. CSL’s Best Practices Leaders include:

Alan R. Andreasen

Professor of Marketing at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Social Marketing Institute. Dr. Andreasen is a specialist in consumer behavior and a world leader in the application of marketing to nonprofit organizations, social marketing, and the market problems of disadvantaged consumers. He is the author or editor of seventeen books, including Strategic Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations with national marketing guru Philip Kotler, and Social Marketing in the 21st Century.

Alan teaches the following sessions:

  • Marketing Principles to Make Change Happen!
  • Social Marketing
  • Advanced Social Marketing

Christine Letts

Associate Dean for Executive Education and the Rita E. Hauser Lecturer in the Practice of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. After receiving her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1976, she joined Cummins Engine Company in Columbus, Indiana and spent 12 years in labor relations and manufacturing management roles, the last of which was Vice President – Columbus Plant Operations. In 1988, Letts became the first Secretary of the Indiana Department of Transportation, and later led the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, a new agency formed from the three existing departments of Social Services, Welfare, and Mental Health. Christine has co-authored Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists, High Performance Nonprofit Organizations and Social Entrepreneurship and Societal Transformation. Christine also teaches nonprofit management in several Executive Education programs including Strategic Management for Leaders of Non-Governmental Organizations and Women and Power. She is the faculty co-chair of Performance Measurement for Nonprofit Organizations.

Christine teaches the following sessions

  • Multiple Dimensions of Performance: Measuring Support, Capacity and Public Value (Harvard University’s JFK School of Government Case Study: The Tampa Museum of Science and Industry)
  • Leading Change (Harvard University’s JFK School of Government Case Study: The Harlem Children’s Zone)

Anthony J. Mayo

Director of the Leadership Initiative at Harvard Business School, The Thomas S. Murphy Distinguished Research Fellow and a Lecturer in Harvard Business School’s Organizational Behavior Unit. The Leadership Initiative is an interdisciplinary center that strives to serve as a catalyst for cutting-edge research and course development on leadership. He is the co-author of In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the 20th Century, which was released in October 2005 by HBS Press and is the culmination of several years of study on context-based leadership. He is also the co-author of Paths to Power: How Insiders and Outsiders Shaped American Business Leadership.

Anthony teaches the following sessions:

  • Leadership Style and Impact (Harvard Business School Case: Nervewire)
  • Managing Performance (Harvard Business School Case: Rob Parsons at Morgan Stanley)

William P.Ryan

Director of the Nonprofit Governance and Accountability Project, a joint initiative of Harvard University’s JFK School of Government’s Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations and Harvard Law School aimed at engaging Harvard researchers in critical questions related to nonprofit governance. More broadly, his work centers on nonprofit organizational effectiveness. He has explored how several forces — including nonprofit access to capital, foundation grantmaking practices, competition with for-profit firms, and nonprofit governance — shape the capacity of nonprofits to deliver on their missions. His publications include High Performance Nonprofit Organizations with Richard P. Chait and Barbara E. Taylor, and Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards, which has been honored with awards from the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, Association of Fundraising Professionals, Council for the Advancement and Support of Education, and Independent Sector. He holds a BA from Columbia University and a Masters in Public Administration from the JFK School of Government at Harvard.

Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of the Nonprofit Board

  • Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of the Nonprofit Board
  • Governance as Leadership: Practice Applications and Implications for Nonprofit Boards

Paul Bloom

Professor of Social Entrepreneurship and Marketing at the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Paul also serves as the Center’s Faculty Director. In this role, he is conducting research on how social entrepreneurial organizations can scale their social impact, and he is also teaching a course in “Corporate Social Impact Management” in the MBA Program. Prior to coming to Duke in 2006, he had a long career doing research on 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). Dr. Bloom is the author or co-author of more than 100 published articles, papers, book chapters, and books. His books include Knowledge Development in Marketing: The MSI Experience and The Handbook of Marketing and Society, and he has also co-authored Marketing Professional Services with national marketing guru Philip Kotler. He holds a Ph.D. in marketing from the Kellogg School of Northwestern University and earned the MBA degree at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Paul teaches the following session:

  • How to Mobilize and Scale Social-Purpose Organizations: Non-traditional Income Generation Strategies for Nonprofits (Regular and Advanced levels)

Tony Schwartz

Co-author of The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy Not Time, which was a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller, spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into 28 languages. Tony is President and CEO of The Energy Project, a company that helps individuals and organizations fuel energy, engagement, focus and productivity by harnessing the science of high performance. Tony has spent 30 years studying, writing about, teaching and coaching people in how to perform at their best. In October 2007, Tony’s article “Manage Energy Not Time: The Science of Stamina,” co-authored with Catherine McCarthy, was published in the Harvard Business Review. The article describes the impact of the Energy Project curriculum on engagement and performance at three Fortune 100 companies. Tony began his career as a journalist. He was a reporter for the New York Times, an Associate Editor at Newsweek, a staff writer at New York and Esquire magazines and a columnist for Fast Company. He co-authored the #1 worldwide bestseller The Art of the Deal with Donald Trump and also wrote What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America. Tony’s most recent book is The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working: The Four Forgotten Needs that Energize Great Performance.

Jonathan Koppell

Professor of Politics and Management and Director of the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management. Jonathan’s research addresses many of the key policy issues of the moment including government involvement in for-profit enterprise, global regulatory institutions, regulation of financial institutions and corporate governance. All of Koppell’s work concerns the design and administration of complex organizations. He has focused on public-private hybrids, government-created entities that operate in the marketplace to achieve public policy goals. In The Politics of Quasi-Government: Hybrid Organizations and the Dynamics of Bureaucratic Control, Koppell raised the dangers presented by the housing government-sponsored enterprises and their chronically weak regulatory oversight. In his just-completed World Rule: The Politics of Global Governance, Koppell turned his attention to “global governance organizations” such as the World Trade Organization, the International Organization for Standardization and the International Accounting Standards Board. Koppell teaches two popular SOM courses. “Managing Organizational Politics” concerns the complex internal dynamics of large organizations. “Social Venture Management” explores the distinctive challenges of running businesses that integrate a social mission and pursuit of profits.

Jonathan teaches the following session:

  • Accountability and Organizational Development: Managing the Board and Other Constituents (Regular and Advanced levels)

Kim Klein

Award-Winning Author, Fundraising for Social Change (now in its fifth edition) and Fundraising in Times of Crisis. Kim is internationally known as a fundraising trainer and consultant, and has provided training and consultation in all 50 states and in 21 countries. She is the Chardon Press Series Editor at Jossey-Bass Publishers, which publishes and distributes materials that help to build a stronger nonprofit sector, and the founder of the bimonthly Grassroots Fundraising Journal. She is also the author of Fundraising for the Long Haul, which explores the particular challenges of older grassroots organizations, and Ask and Raise More Money which she edited with her partner, Stephanie Roth.

Kim teaches the following session:

  • Reliable Fundraising in Unreliable Times: Innovative Fundraising Strategies (Regular and Advanced levels)

Carl Honoré

Award-Winning Journalist and Author, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed and Under Pressure. Carl worked with street children in Brazil before turning to writing. He has been a foreign correspondent in both Europe and South America for The Economist, Observer, Houston Chronicle, National Post (Canada), Miami Herald, and Time magazine. His first book, In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed, examines the modern compulsion to hurry and chronicles a global trend toward putting on the brakes. It has been translated into 30 languages and landed on bestseller lists in many countries. Hailed as a manual for leading a richer, more productive life by publications ranging from Yoga Journal and Oprah Magazine to The Economist and Business World, it was chosen as a Non-Fiction Book of the Year by the Christian Science Monitor, and was a finalist in the Books For a Better Life Awards (US) and the Nautilus Book Awards (US). Honoré has been described by ABC News as “the unofficial godfather of a growing cultural shift toward slowing down.” Newsweek called him “an international spokesman for the concept of leisure.”

Carl teaches the following session:

  • The Power of Slow: Why the Best Way to Thrive in a Fast-Paced World is to Slow Down (Regular and Advanced levels)

Nick Morgan

One of America’s top communication theorists and coaches and a passionate teacher, Nick is committed to helping people find clarity in their thinking and ideas – and then delivering them with panache. He has been commissioned by Fortune 50 companies to write for many CEOs and presidents. He has coached people to give Congressional testimony, to appear on the Today Show, and to take on the investment community. He has worked widely with political and educational leaders. His acclaimed book on public speaking was published by Harvard in 2003 and reprinted in paperback in 2005 as Give Your Speech, Change the World: How to Move Your Audience to Action. His new book on authentic communications, Trust Me, was published by Jossey-Bass in January 2009. Nick served as editor of the Harvard Management Communication Letter from 1998 – 2003. Nick is a former Fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. After earning his PhD. in literature and rhetoric, Nick spent a number of years teaching Shakespeare and Public Speaking at the University of Virginia, Lehigh University, and Princeton University.

Michael J. Worth

Professor of Nonprofit Management in the School of Public Policy and Public Administration at The George Washington University. He teaches graduate courses on Governing and Managing Nonprofit Organizations, Managing Fund Raising and Philanthropy, Nonprofit Enterprise, and Managing Nonprofit Boards.

Michael teaches the following session:

  • Best and Worst Practices in Fundraising (includes a Funder Panel, where 4-5 program officers from major Washington-area foundations and corporate-giving programs visit us to have a candid discussion facilitated by Dr. Worth about what donors are looking for – and what turns them off – when approached by a nonprofit director)

Susan Fox

Independent fundraising consultant to non-profit organizations since 1980 and has held the designation of Certified Fund Raising Executive since 1995. She specializes in providing training for clients in major gifts, annual fund, capital and planned giving campaigns. She also provides services in grantwriting, appeal letter writing and general fundraising strategies. Susan frequently leads workshops on fundraising throughout the United States and Mexico and has been an instructor at UC Berkeley Extension, the University of San Francisco and the University of Montana. Together with her colleague Cheryl A. Clarke, Susan organizes and moderates successful Reality Grantmaking workshops at several Bay Area conferences. The two have also written a book on proposal writing. Grant Proposal Makeover: Transform Your Request from No to Yes was published by Jossey-Bass.

Susan teaches the following sessions:

  • Diversifying Your Funding Base
  • Raising Funds in Challenging Times
  • Getting Your Board to Give and Get

Matthew O’Grady

Vice President, National Expansion of the Taproot Foundation, which awards about $20 million in pro bono services to nonprofits annually. From 1997 through 2004, he served in several positions at The Management Center, including head of its consulting practice and training programs. Prior to that, he served as Director of Business Volunteers for the Arts/San Francisco, and held several other nonprofit management positions. He has served for more than 21 years on a variety of nonprofit boards and 7 years as board chair. Organizations he has served include the California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies and Shanti, San Francisco’s renowned organization serving people with AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses.

Matthew teaches the following sessions:

  • Governance Essentials
  • Leading Together: The Board/CEO Partnership

Lynda S. Ramirez-Blust

Lynda is owner of LSRB Consulting LLC and is committed to building the financial management, accounting, and governance acumen and capacity of nonprofit board members, management teams, staff, and volunteers. She accomplishes this through the development and delivery of training to groups of nonprofit leaders, facilitation of finance team retreats, and direct assistance on finance and accounting related matters including audit preparation, budgeting, and keeping the books. Lynda has over 13 years of experience working with nonprofit organizations in various capacities including board member, treasurer, CFO, external auditor, consultant, and volunteer.

Lynda teaches the following sessions:

  • Financial Literacy for Non-Financial Managers
  • Improving Governance and Oversight through Budgeting and Forecasting
  • Financial Management (Regular and Advanced levels)

Julie Shafer

Founder of Julie Shafer Development + Philanthropy, a national nonprofit consulting firm. Ms. Shafer offers a multifaceted skill set honed though over 20 years as a philanthropy executive. After establishing a large private foundation in California, Ms. Shafer led an $80M capital campaign for neuroscience before establishing her consulting practice. She brings a translational approach that bridges the gaps between philanthropists and nonprofits. Working across the spectrum of giving, Ms. Shafer turns donors into philanthropists through discreet, personalized and focused giving strategies. Her creative and measureable fundraising programs allow nonprofits to quickly reenergize their staff and their process. Ms. Shafer offers development & philanthropy assessment, training, recruiting and board facilitation. She has served on numerous foundation and nonprofit boards and created the Women in Philanthropy Roundtable in San Francisco.

Sam Horn

Author of POP! and a communication/business strategist who helps organizations, executives and entrepreneurs become one-of-a-kind vs one-of-many so they break out vs. blend in. She has been interviewed on NPR, MSNBC, BusinessWeek.com and featured in the Washington Post, Investors Business Daily and Readers Digest. Her books have been sold world-wide in 17 languages. She speaks frequently for corporate and convention clients including Intel, NASA, Capital One, Boeing and the Inc. 500/5000 conference and is known for her original ideas and interactive programs that focus on real-life ideas people can use immediately to produce real-world results. Sam is also the Official Pitch Coach for Springboard Enterprises (which has helped entrepreneurs receive $5 Billion in venture capital) and is respected for her ability to help clients crystallize compelling, commercially-viable messages, missions and brands that scale their influence, impact and income.

Richard Walker

Dick Walker has over 35 years of fundraising and development experience primarily in the independent school sector. He joined the OAI team as a Managing Director in January 2010, after initially establishing a relationship with OAI as a Senior Consultant in 2009. Most recently, Dick served FBR Capital Markets as Vice President of Corporate Giving from 2004 to 2008. Prior to FBR, Dick had a 32 year career at the Landon School as a teacher and development officer. While at Landon, he served as Director of Development from 1982 to 2005. Dick serves as Chair of the Board of College For Every Student, a national nonprofit working with underserved urban and rural public school students nationwide to increase attendance and success in college. He is also a member of the Board of Mentors, Inc., a Washington, DC-based nonprofit organization that matches adults with at-risk teenagers. Additionally, Dick serves on the Board of Princeton AlumniCorps, an organization that provides increased opportunities for Princeton graduates to serve the public interest through fellowships and other programs. He is also the co-founder of the Gallup Young Leaders Program, a five day summer leadership program for underserved Washington, DC youth.

Contact CSL if you are interested in setting up a Transform – Certificate of Executive Nonprofit Leadership for nonprofits in your region, focus area or funding area.