About

I’ve worked across the sector from a few different angles. I started in direct services, in housing for chronically homeless families, and then for people living with HIV/AIDS. From there I moved into grants compliance, then into private philanthropy. I spent seven years at a private, regional healthcare foundation. I started as their first Grants Manager and finished as Senior Program Officer, with a focus on capacity-building grantmaking. I helped develop the foundation’s grantmaking infrastructure and partnered with national programs like Listen4Good and Catchafire to bring them to Northeastern Pennsylvania.

The foundation seat was the one that really changed how I think about governance. I read board lists, met with executive directors, attended site visits, and watched many of the same dynamics repeat across different organizations. Some boards were genuinely engaged in their organizations. Others existed mostly on paper. What I came to see was that the difference most often came down to whether the board had been built with intention, or assembled over time.

Later, I took on an interim executive director role at a nonprofit. My board chair was an incredible partner, with me every step of the way. Even so, the daily reality of the role reinforced everything I’d observed in my time at the foundation.

A board’s engagement defaults to whatever structure is (or isn’t) in place. If expectations aren’t clearly defined and communicated, members can’t be held to them. If people are never explicitly taught what their role requires, they will rarely figure it out on their own. These issues are all connected: they’re consequences of how a board was put together in the first place.

The board I worked with was filled with good people who genuinely cared about the mission, and my chair was exceptional (we still keep in touch!). But like many nonprofits I’d seen over the years, it had been gradually assembled rather than deliberately built. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, just years of the same practices building up over time.

That experience helped shape what I do at ebersmith coaching & consulting. I work with executive directors and boards on questions I’ve experienced from several perspectives: what role the board actually plays, what it should be doing, who should be on it, and how an organization moves a board from assembled to built with respect for the people who are already there.

The credentials I carry shape how I work with clients. I’m a BoardSource Certified Governance Consultant, which means I’ve been trained in nationally recognized frameworks and BoardSource has signed off on my ability to apply them. I’m also a certified LEGO® Serious Play® facilitator. I use it when I think a board could benefit from a different kind of conversation: one that makes abstract ideas concrete and gives everyone in the room a way to be heard.

If any of this sounds like the room you’ve been sitting in, you’re the person I built this practice for.