Jon Pratt, Co-Director

Jon Pratt serves as Co-Director and is a founding partner of GrantAdvisor. Jon is also the former executive director of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (MCN). MCN is an association of 2,300 organizations that sponsors research, training, lobbying and negotiated discounts to strengthen Minnesota’s nonprofit sector. Jon has worked with MCN since 1987.

He has also worked at Minnesota Public Interest Research Group as an attorney and lobbyist, as regional director at the Youth Project, and as director for the Philanthropy Project. Jon has consulted with nongovernmental organizations on the development of NGO associations and services in Canada, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia and Turkey. Pratt has a law degree from Antioch School of Law, and a M.P.A. from Harvard University.

Kari Aanestad, Co-Director

Kari Aanestad serves as Co-Director of GrantAdvisor and is the Associate Director at the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits. In this role, Kari advances the mission and work of MCN and Minnesota’s nonprofit sector through strategic visioning, fundraising, relationship development, sector research, and education. Contact Kari at kaanestad (at) grantadvisor (dot) org.

Jan Masaoka

Jan Masaoka is a founding partner of GrantAdvisor and the Chief Executive Officer of the California Association of Nonprofits. Jan is a leading writer and thought leader on nonprofit organizations with particular emphasis on boards of directors, business planning, and the role of nonprofits in society.

Jan also founded and managed Blue Avocado magazine, to which 63,000 people have subscribed online, and which has been described as the second-best read publication in the nonprofit sector. Jan has been named eight times as one of the “Fifty Most Influential People” in the nonprofit sector nationwide.

Perla Ni

Perla Ni is a founding partner of GrantAdvisor and the CEO of GreatNonprofits. Perla brings executive experience in corporate, academic, and nonprofit sectors. She was the founder and former publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the leading journal on nonprofit management and philanthropy. Prior to her work at SSIR, Ni co-founded Grassroots Enterprise, later acquired by global public relations firm Edelman.

Janet Camarena

Janet Camarena serves as the Director of Transparency Initiatives for Foundation Center, working to champion greater foundation transparency. A key part of her responsibilities include providing leadership to Glasspockets.org, which she helped to create and found inside Foundation Center in 2010, and which provides foundations with a variety of tools and features designed to encourage greater philanthropic openness. Prior to taking on this role, Janet served as Director of Foundation Center’s regional office in San Francisco for 15 years.

She was among 48 nonprofit leaders selected for the American Express Nonprofit Leadership Academy. She completed her undergraduate work at Mills College and received a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from San Jose State University. She serves on the boards of the Alameda County Library Foundation and Community Initiatives, a fiscal sponsorship provider and volunteers teaching art and art history at her son’s elementary school.

Aaron Dorfman

Aaron Dorfman is president and CEO of the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), a research and advocacy organization that works to ensure America’s grantmakers and wealthy donors are responsive to the needs of those with the least wealth, opportunity and power. Dorfman, a thoughtful critic, frequently speaks and writes about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in philanthropy, the benefits of funding advocacy and community organizing, and the need for greater accountability and transparency in the philanthropic sector. Before joining NCRP in 2007, Dorfman served for 15 years as a community organizer with two national organizing networks, spearheading grassroots campaigns on a variety of issues.

Robert Egger

Robert was the President of the DC Central Kitchen, the country’s first “community kitchen”, where donated food is used to fuel a nationally recognized culinary arts job training program for 24 years. Since opening in 1989, the Kitchen (which is a $11 million a year, self-sustaining, social enterprise) has produced over 30 million meals and helped 1,500 men and women gain full time employment.

Kathleen Enright

Kathleen P. Enright is the President & CEO of the Council on Foundations. Prior to her role, she was the founding president and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. GEO is a diverse community of more than 500 grantmakers working to reshape the way philanthropy operates.

Kathleen speaks and writes regularly on issues of nonprofit and grantmaker effectiveness at national and regional gatherings of executives and trustees. Publications include Investing in Leadership: Inspiration and Ideas from Philanthropy’s Latest Frontier and Funding Effectiveness: Lessons in Building Nonprofit Capacity. She is also a contributing blogger for The Huffington Post.

Casey Johnson

Casey is the founding executive director of GreenLight Bay Area. Prior to GreenLight, Casey completed a fellowship at Room to Read, an international NGO focused on literacy and girls education in developing countries. Casey’s background has been working with literacy and education-focused nonprofit organizations in California, Massachusetts and Washington, DC, including Raising A Reader, a GreenLight Fund portfolio organization in Boston. Casey earned master’s degrees in education from the University of San Francisco and in English from Brooklyn College.

Vu Le

Vu Le is the Executive Director of the Rainier Valley Corps, an organization focused on communities of color in Seattle’s Rainier Valley. Vu’s passion to make the world better, combined with a low score on the Law School Admission Test, drove him into the field of nonprofit work. Known for his no-BS approach and irreverent sense of humor, Vu has been featured in dozens, if not hundreds, of his own blog posts, which you can read at nonprofitAF.com.

Megan McTiernan

Megan McTiernan has spent over 15 years working in organizations focused on youth and the working poor. She is the Senior Vice President of EARN and previously served as the Executive Director of the Thomson Family Foundation, establishing the Foundation and identifying workforce development and asset-building projects in the San Francisco and Dallas areas.

McTiernan serves on the steering committees of the Bay Area Asset Funders Network, the North Texas Asset Funders Network and the Bay Area Workforce Funders Collaborative. She was a 2009 KIVA Fellow in Mexico, analyzing the impact of microfinance. She is a volunteer with the local CASA program serving youth in foster care and also serves on the California Council for IGNITE, bringing political and civic programs to young women. Megan holds a BA in Spanish and Latin American Studies from Tulane University and an EdM from Harvard University.

Yusef Mgeni

Yusef Mgeni is retired but very active in civic engagement. His background includes stints as an award-winning journalist/producer; Board member and Senior Program Officer in philanthropy; faculty member at a number of institutions of higher learning in Minnesota, including teaching and volunteering at MN Correctional facilities for men and women; work with dozens of constituency-governed, community-based human service, civil rights and social change organizations; service on more than 100 local, regional and national nonprofit boards; President of the Urban Coalition–a research-based, public policy and advocacy organization in the Twin Cities and his current service as a Vice President of the MN/Dakotas Area Conference of the NAACP.

Bruce Sievers

Bruce R. Sievers is a visiting scholar and lecturer at the Haas Center for Public Service and the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society, which he helped found in 2006, at Stanford University. Previously, he served as the Executive Director of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund from 1983 to 2002 and as the founding CEO of both California Council for the Humanities from 1974 to 1983, and Montana Committee for the Humanities from 1972 to 1974. In addition, Mr. Sievers is a Consulting Director of the Skirball Foundation and a Senior Fellow Emeritus with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Mr. Sievers was a Fulbright Scholar and received a B.A. in International Relations, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Stanford University.

Sharon Stapel

Sharon Stapel is the President and Executive Director of the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York (NYCC). She comes to NPCC from the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (AVP), where she was the Executive Director of the nation’s largest LGBTQ and HIV-affected anti-violence program. She was named a White House Champion of Change and recognized by President Obama for her advocacy work. Stapel directed units at South Brooklyn Legal Services and the Legal Aid Society and coordinated the Street Law Project of the National Lawyers Guild.

Colburn Wilbur

Colburn “Cole” Wilbur is Trustee Emeritus and former President and CEO of The David and Lucile Packard Foundation. He was also interim President and CEO of The California Wellness Foundation, helping the foundation through a difficult time. Cole was a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foundations and in 1999 received the Distinguished Grantmaker Award. In 2005 Cole served as interim President and CEO of the Council on Foundations. He also served as Executive Director and CEO of the Sierra Club Foundation, ran a computer center, and was in banking.

He has provided advice to foundations around the U.S. and internationally. These include the California Community Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, Playa Foundation, Craig Neilsen Foundation, Global Fund for Women, Baker Foundation, and many others.