Heather McLeod Grant

Heather McLeod Grant is a serial social entrepreneur, thought leader, and senior advisor with 25 years of experience in social change. For the last two decades, she has focused on advising nonprofits, foundations, and donors on scaling their impact—with a particular expertise in strategy, capacity-building, governance, leadership development, and networks. She is co-author of the bestselling "Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits," and numerous case studies and publications including "The Giving Code," "The Giving Journey," "Pioneers in Justice," "The New Normal," "Building Capacity for Sustained Collaboration," and "Leading Systems Change." Her work has been published or cited in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, the Atlantic, Forbes, Fast Company and the Washington Post. She has spoken at all leading social sector conferences, delivered more than 150 keynote addresses, taught a Stanford course on nonprofit management, lectured at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and run workshops at Esalen and the 1440 Foundation.

Heather spent 20 years as a social impact consultant and advisor, starting at McKinsey & Company, and then Monitor Institute (now part of Deloitte) before helping launch Open Impact, a nationally recognized philanthropy advising firm, where she remains a senior advisor. She began her early career as an Echoing Green Fellow when she co-founded Who Cares, a national magazine for young social activists and entrepreneurs published in the 1990s. She has advised many leading nonprofits and foundations of our time, including The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, and the Levi Strauss Foundation, along with social startups and legacy nonprofits such as Peer Health Exchange, First Five, the Nature Conservancy, and SeaChange Capital.

Heather has been a Venture Partner with Draper Richards Kaplan and has served on local, national, and global nonprofit boards. She is currently an advisor to Stanford GSB’s Allies99, HEAL (at UCSF), Ignite, and Spring Impact, and has served on the boards of Fuse Corps, Jacaranda Health, and chaired the Woodside Elementary School bond campaign. She was recently named among the 25 most influential San Franciscan’s in San Francisco Magazine (2020), is a Senior Fellow at the American Leadership Forum, and a founding member of the influential Silicon Guild, a network of global thought leaders. She holds an MBA from Stanford University and an AB from Harvard University.