Faculty Who Are Experts in Their Fields
Our faculty are recognized thought leaders in the philanthropic and social impact sectors. Their diverse experiences and training integrate knowledge for real-world social change. See below for a list of faculty members that have participated in past sessions of this course.
Faculty Co-Directors
Katherina M. ‘Kat’ Rosqueta is the founding executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy, faculty co-director of High Impact Philanthropy Academy, and adjunct faculty in the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy & Practice (SP2). Founded as a collaboration between SP2 and alumni of the Wharton School, the Center for High Impact Philanthropy is the premier source of knowledge and education on how philanthropy can do more good.
Richard Marker is faculty co-director for the High Impact Philanthropy Academy. Marker has been in the philanthropy world for many years: as CEO of a major foundation, a trustee of several others, and a speaker to foundations, wealth management firms, and philanthropy conferences in 40 countries
Recent Lecturers
Ron Albahary is an instructor in the Center for High Impact Philanthropy’s executive education programs and currently sits on the industry advisory board for Aligning Equity (working title), the Center’s joint initiative with Tara Health Foundation and Wharton Social Impact Initiative examining current gender lens investing opportunities in public equity. He is the Chief Investment Officer at Threshold Group, a multi-family office with a history of considering impact alongside financial investment. Ron ‘wakes up every morning with a passion for creating innovative investment solutions that protect investors from emotions that can drive their decision-making regarding their wealth and, in turn, can help maximize the chances of achieving their goals’. Ron also serves on the Threshold Group Executive Committee, which oversees company operations and strategy.
Carra Cote-Ackah is a senior fellow at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy. Carra presently serves as Head of Philanthropy Engagement and Legacy Planning at Goldman Sachs. In this role, she leads the firm’s comprehensive philanthropic strategic offering and customized educational programs to support multigenerational legacy and stewardship.
She also serves as Chair of The Surdna Foundation (a family foundation with over $1 billion in assets), which aims to foster and just sustainable communities in the U.S. She is a member of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), a global leadership network.
Mirele B. Goldsmith teaches evaluation and assessment at High Impact Philanthropy Academy. She launched her evaluation practice in 1998, just as interest in evaluation began to skyrocket among funders. She recognized that funders are the primary consumers of this service, yet few know enough about the choices involved to set appropriate expectations of evaluation. This realization led to Mirele’s first course for funders about how to be informed consumers of evaluation services. Since then she has taught at the Academy for Funder Education at New York University, the Milano School of New School University as well as at the MicroEdge Solutions Conferences, Institute for Philanthropy, and Grant Managers Network, among others.
Mirele helps donors and grantees to use the tools of evaluation to improve programs. With many years of experience in the trenches as a non-profit manager, she adapts the evaluation process to fit real-world time and resource limitations. She is proud to be known as the “user-friendly” evaluator.
Richard ‘Dick’ Henriques is a senior fellow at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy and Wharton Social Impact Initiative. In that role, he leads the Center’s work to develop practical guidance on how to deploy capital, alongside grants, to achieve philanthropic goals. He was the lead author of the Center’s paper, Program-Related Investments: Is There a Bigger Opportunity for Mission Investing By Private Foundations? and served on the research advisory board for Aligning Equity (working title), the Center’s joint initiative with Tara Health Foundation and Wharton Social Impact Initiative examining current gender lens investing opportunities in public equity. Prior to his appointment at Penn, Dick served as the CFO of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Donald W. Kramer, lecturer at Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice, is chair of the Nonprofit Law Group at the Philadelphia law firm of Montgomery, McCracken, Walker & Rhoads, LLP. Mr. Kramer has more than 40 years of experience dealing with the concerns of nonprofit organizations, not only as a lawyer, but also as a teacher, writer, publisher, and board member. Mr. Kramer is editor and publisher of Don Kramer’s Nonprofit Issues®, a national electronic newsletter of “Nonprofit Law You Need to Know” (www.nonprofitissues.com), which he started at Montgomery, McCracken in 1989.
Andy Rachlin, lecturer at Penn’s Weitzman School of Design, serves as Spring Garden Capital Group’s President where he is responsible for new product and market development, and also helps oversee the firm’s origination function.
Prior to joining Spring Garden, Andy was a Managing Director at Reinvestment Fund, a $1 billion impact investment fund, and as Chief Investment Officer of its Registered Investment Advisor subsidiary. In these roles, he led the organization’s originations, credit analysis and deal structuring teams during a period of substantial growth, and also raised more than $80 million in equity and debt capital from institutional investors for innovative impact investment funds focused on opportunities as diverse as bridge financing for performance-based social service contracts and clean energy project finance.
Ruth Shaber, M.D., founder and president of Tara Health Foundation, started her career in 1990 as an obstetrician and gynecologist at the Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco Medical Center. She served as chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology from 1997 to 2003 and spent six years as director of Women’s Health for the Northern California division of Kaiser Permanente. She is the founder of the Women’s Health Research Institute in Kaiser Permanente’s Northern California region. Ruth was medical director at the Kaiser Permanente Care Management Institute (CMI) from 2007 to 2012. At CMI she worked with Kaiser Permanente’s regional and national leaders to apply the best evidence-based and successful systems approaches to create reliable clinical performance.
Admissions and Program Team
Kelly Andrews is director of knowledge management and marketing, managing CHIP’s marketing, communications, editorial, digital platforms, and educational programs.
Kelly joined CHIP from the Wharton School, where she served in varied roles as Wharton Alumni Magazine editor, Associate Director of Publications, and most recently Senior Content Producer in Wharton Marketing and Communications, where she managed website content strategy. Her work at Wharton was honored with two CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) Circle of Excellence Gold awards, a CASE DII Accolades Gold, a College & University Public Relations and Associated Professionals Silver Award, and a Wharton Spot Award “for exhibiting the School’s Guiding Principles, going above and beyond, or for making Wharton a better place to work.” Prior to joining Penn, she was managing editor for content at the late e-commerce pioneer, CDNOW, and a senior and web editor at several trade magazines.