Empowering Colleges and Universities to Achieve More

Kelt Kindick is a leader in Bain’s Social Impact practice focusing on addressing inequities in K-12 and higher education. He also advises clients on governance issues especially related to the role and duties of the board of directors. Kelt joined Bain & Company in 1980 and was elected partner in 1986. He has served as managing director of Bain’s Boston office, chairman of the firm’s management committee, chief investment officer and global CFO. From 2003 to 2005, Kelt took a leave of absence to serve as the chief financial officer of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reporting to Governor Mitt Romney. Kelt is the lead director of Devon Energy. He has also served on the boards of WPX Energy, The Advisory Board Company and Beacon Health Strategies.

Rebecca Russell is a member of Bain & Company’s Consumer Products practice. She has 14 years of consulting experience with Bain. Rebecca primarily advises consumer products and retail clients undergoing large-scale transformations. She has deep experience in operating model redesign, behavior change, and establishing agile enterprises. Rebecca has additionally led work spanning adjacency growth, corporate diligence, and performance improvement at Bain. In addition to her client work, she is an active member of the Womxn at Bain affinity group, is very engaged in Bain’s associate consultant recruiting efforts, and leads Atlanta’s Social Impact education pillar. Rebecca holds an MBA from The Wharton School, where she was a Palmer Scholar, and an undergraduate degree, with honors, from Washington & Lee University. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and two children.

Kristin has spent her career building and growing innovative human capital-centered companies across the education and healthcare sectors in a variety of leadership roles. Her experience spans mission-driven startup and growth stage companies in both the private and non-profit space. She’s an accomplished executive, operator, and people leader, specializing in spearheading strategy, growth, organizational development, change leadership, and communications. Most recently, Kristin was the Chief Talent Officer at Oxeon, a venture studio, investment, and executive search firm in healthcare, where she led to and through a Founder-to-CEO transition and other strategic people and communications initiatives. Prior to that, Kristin was the Head of Growth for The KIND Foundation where she was a founding executive. She oversaw the creation, launch, marketing and communications, and international expansion of the $20M signature corporate social responsibility initiative, Empatico, an ed-tech platform to develop empathy among children around the world. Before that, she spent 7 years at Teach For America during its peak growth years, culminating in the role of Vice President, Strategy. There, she developed the organization’s national strategy, pivoting from a teacher pipeline to a leadership pipeline, and pioneered their national executive leadership program, recognized for its innovative methodology and impact. Kristin is Vice Chair of the Board of Futures Ignite, which was incubated in a NYC public high school to significantly increase graduation and college rates and is now growing. She is also an Advisory Board Member of the National Institute of Student Success, which replicates the pioneering, nationally recognized work at Georgia State that radically improved graduation rates and closed equity gaps at other college institutions. Kristin got her start as a journalist, as a second grade teacher, and by learning from her serial-entrepreneur father who showed her both the power and risk of entrepreneurship to create positive change and impact. Growing up in a low-income household, she has personally experienced the life-changing effects of quality education, healthcare, and financial literacy. She grew up on the west coast and now Brooklyn, NY is home, where she lives with her husband Chad, son Hayes, and dog Fia.

Jen is a venture partner with Reach Capital. Reach is an impact investing fund that backs mission-driven founders developing edtech solutions that improve access to opportunity through education. Jen leads Reach’s impact efforts, articulating Reach’s approach to impact and providing support to companies to measure and deepen their impact.  Jen has operational experience in tech startups, K12 districts, and education non-profits in functional areas such as product management, teaching, and school improvement coaching. Reach’s higher ed portfolio includes Mainstay (chatbot), Stellic (degree management), Riipen (work-based learning), and Handshake (transition to careers),

Natalie Grandison serves as the Director of Higher Education & Strategy at the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation. She believes deeply in the value of community investment, meaningful social impact and the potential for systems to change, especially in higher education scholarship administration and student supports. At the Clark Foundation, Natalie’s portfolio has committed nearly $400 million in philanthropic capital to date to ensure high-potential students with financial need can access a high-quality engineering education. Her primary responsibility is managing the scholarship arm of the Foundation’s signature academic investment, the A. James Clark Scholars Program, which will support over 450 students at 11 campuses nationwide in perpetuity. In addition to the Clark Scholars Program, her work involves investing in organizations that empower leaders to creatively develop solutions to support the whole student beyond financial aid and in the classroom. Natalie oversees the Foundation’s multi-year investment of nearly $220 million in students, faculty, infrastructure, and research at the University of Maryland. She serves on the Board of Trustees Engineering Foundation at the University of Virginia. Natalie also serves on the Advisory & External Evaluation Board for the National Science Foundation Project, “Better Together: Leveraging the Shared Commitment of Community Colleges and HBCUs to Optimize Black Engineering Student Pathways.” Previously, Natalie was the Director of External Relations in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, where she focused on development, corporate and public relations, external outreach, board management, and communications. Prior to that, she worked in development at George Washington University; City Year – Washington, DC; and New York University. Natalie volunteered on the Board of Jubilee Jumpstart, an early childhood education center; and as President of the Board for the Congressional Chorus, where she is a singer and dancer. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Sociology and Business and a Master’s in Public Administration from New York University. She resides in Washington, DC with her husband and daughter.