I’ve always been fascinated by what makes people care.

That curiosity first led me to study psychology at Harvard. It followed me to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, where I became increasingly interested in how ideas become organizations – and how organizations create meaningful change, especially using technology to drive connection and measurable impact.

For the past fifteen years, that mindset found a home at Etsy and DonorsChoose.

I joined DonorsChoose, an award-winning K-12 education nonprofit, when it was a scrappy $30 million organization. When I left, we’d grown the organization into a $150 million organization bringing equipping classrooms in nearly every public school in America.

During those years, I grew individual giving from $40M to $80M annually and built out several functions from the ground up including marketing, product innovation, organizational strategy, donor engagement, and business operations. And had the privilege of working alongside extraordinarily talented people who cared deeply about improving public education.

But somewhere along the way, other questions started pulling at me.

Why have we been talking about giving to charity in the same way for so many years? Doing good is not just great for the world but for the individual – why do some people become lifelong champions for a cause while others never quite find the issue that captures their heart? Why are there no resources for nonprofit leaders around growing good things?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that these are the questions I want to spend the next chapter of my career exploring.

Today, I help organizations grow by understanding the people they’re trying to serve and engage. And I’m beginning a set of research behind the scenes around helping individuals discover the causes they’ll be proud to support for decades.

I don’t think we need everyone to care about everything.

I think we need more people to find the thing they identify with that will make both their lives and the world better.