Devon D.

Chief of Staff

As a strategy thought partner to founders, CEOs, and leadership teams, Devon creates conditions for deeper impact through optimizing organizational capacity around people and processes. She is a strategy management consultant and works with impact organizations and social enterprises mostly in climate, activism, gender, philanthropy, education, and systems change or ecosystem building. She has worked with organizations including Global Exchange, Thousand Currents, Pisces Foundation, Taproot Foundation, Education Outside, Acterra, the Community Food Bank of Fresno, Conveners.org, Blue Heart Action Fund, Undocufund SF, and Al Otro Lado. She is the co-creator of a community and equity-based conversation platform of US-based social impact practitioners who are disrupting the way social change happens called Possibility Project.

Devon has also worked in executive coaching, strategic and implementation planning, and board development as a senior consultant at a firm called Schaffer&Combs in San Francisco. Devon has designed revenue generation plans with organizations including networks like Blue Heart, Conveners.org, and Social Enterprise Alliance. Most recently she completed a strategic plan and implementation plan with a climate activism organization in Palo Alto called Acterra and remains an advisor for their growth in programming and revenue activities. At Education Outside, where Devon served as Chief of Staff, she led the leadership team in translating the strategic plan into a business plan to reach replication goals for environmental education programming across California.

Devon has a background in experiential learning, peer mentorship, fundraising, and network growth. She was the first staff member of a global network called Tendrel, funded by Skoll Foundation, Ashoka, and Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, where she launched the Young Presidents Organization (YPO) for social sector social entrepreneurs who are founders, CEOs, and Presidents. She co-created the growth strategy and led the implementation while building successful partnerships along the way.

As a Bay Area native, Devon brings a deep focus on people in her work where equity and participatory engagement are at the center of her facilitation, communication, and community-centered practices. Devon holds a BA in politics and culture from the University of San Francisco and an MA in Sustainable Community Development from Brandeis University. She also comes from a legacy of family members who deeply value our natural world and who have founded organizations working to preserve land in San Mateo County with organizations like Peninsula Open Space Trust and the MidPeninsula Regional Open Space District. Devon follows a plant-based diet and you can find her running most days in Golden Gate Park with her 70lb rescue dog, Rosa.

SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

  • Chief of staff
  • Human resources
  • Management consulting

EDUCATION

  • MA, Brandeis University
  • BA, University of San Francisco

TOP INDUSTRIES

  • Education
  • Management consulting
  • Non-profit

Don’t Wish for Capacity. Build for It.