My Unexpected Path Into Philanthropy
Every once in a while someone asks how I ended up working in philanthropy. After all, I’m still “young” (I will need to stop saying this soon…but I’m still holding on). I built a successful career as a fundraiser and community-builder, and here I am helping families give their wealth away. The honest answer to this question about my journey is that my relationship to giving has changed shape several times over the course of my life - in many ways, it has shaped me.
Long before I worked in philanthropy, I experienced it from the other side. I wouldn’t have been able to attend an elite liberal arts college without financial aid — support made possible by people I will likely never meet, who believed that investing in someone else’s future mattered.
Years later, through a combination of extremely hard work and some luck, giving back to the community became something much more personal. It’s an active conversation with my own growing family - where we give, how much, why it matters, and how we think about generosity as part of the life we’re building.
And eventually, through a combination of more hard work and some more luck, philanthropy also became my profession.
Today I spend my days working with families and individuals as they navigate their own questions about giving: how to do it thoughtfully, how to make decisions together and how to translate values into real-world action. Just last year, I helped move nearly $5M of my clients’ wealth into the community. Hard work and luck.
Recently, I had the chance to talk about my journey on the Generational Wealth podcast — from being a beneficiary of philanthropy, to becoming a donor myself, to now advising others in this work.
In this episode, we talk about:
One of my favorite books, The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin, and how your philanthropy might look different if you knew the date you would die;
Being shaped by the generosity of others;
The importance of process for the rising generation.
If you’re curious about the path that led me here - and why this work matters so much to me personally - I’d love for you to watch or listen.
