Who We Are
Trusted advisors to nonprofit leaders and philanthropists
Jen Ratay, Founder
Executive Coach. Team Builder. Social Impact Strategist. Facilitator.
For the past 30 years, Jen has developed high-performing, mission-driven organizations, teams, and leaders who are creating positive social change. The consulting practice she founded provides customized executive coaching and consulting services to nonprofit founders, boards, and senior leadership teams. Jen also serves as an advisor to individual philanthropists and charitable foundations.
Under Jen's leadership as Executive Director of the Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), SV2 scaled its grantmaking and launched field-leading educational programs that helped hundreds of donor families in Northern California become more confident and generous in their charitable giving and volunteering. Prior to that, Jen was a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, where she worked with the senior leadership team on organization-wide strategy, evaluation, and learning initiatives. Jen also managed Office of the President grants and built and led the foundation's Organizational Effectiveness grantmaking program to bolster nonprofits' organizational health and impact.
The Silicon Valley Business Journal honored Jen as a Woman of Influence for her community leadership and, prior to that, one of Silicon Valley's top 40 Under 40 for her contributions to the nonprofit sector. Jen has served on numerous nonprofit boards of directors, including Northern California Grantmakers and Female Footballers. She co-taught the Stanford MBA course, Critical Analytical Thinking, and has been a guest lecturer on leadership, philanthropy, and nonprofit management topics at Stanford. Other speaking engagements have included the Churchill Club and the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at Peking University.
Jen's early career included roles as an aide to a U.S. Congressman in Washington, D.C., and with the United Nations Committee on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva, Switzerland. After migrating west to California, she directed student programming at the Public Management Program at Stanford Graduate School of Business's Center for Social Innovation.
Jen holds an MPA from Princeton University and a BA from Dartmouth College where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She was a starter on the Dartmouth Women's Varsity soccer team that went undefeated in the Ivy League and earned the program's first NCAA post-season bid, finishing ranked 13th in the nation. Jen also served as president of the Dartmouth Mountaineering Club, through which she met her college sweat heart turned future husband while climbing in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
In her free time, Jen enjoys mountain biking Bay Area trails, coaching and watching soccer, and organizing all-women mountaineering trips up Mount Shasta. A Massachusetts native, Jen's lifelong love for the Boston Celtics remains strong.
Shelley Ratay, Partner
Environmental Leader. Program Director. Board Member.
Shelley is program director for the Change Leadership for Sustainability Program at Stanford University's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. The program offers executive education courses and a masters degree to prepare leaders with the knowledge and skills needed to intervene in complex systems in service of human well-being around the world and across generations.
Shelley has also served as a social impact and environmental sustainability consultant for a number of years. She has broad nonprofit management experience and domain expertise in the fields of land conservation, affordable housing development and green building.
Shelley has held a variety of executive leadership, strategy development and project management roles. Among them, she served as executive director of California's oldest land trust, Sempervirens Fund, where she led the organization’s efforts to protect the majestic redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains and create opportunities for people to enjoy them.
As project director at First Community Housing, Shelley oversaw the financing, green design and construction of affordable apartment buildings, providing safe and healthy housing for hundreds of low-income families in the Bay Area. In her 15+ years in the social sector, she also worked for Beartooth Capital Partners, The Trust for Public Land, Conservation International and Opportunity Fund.
Shelley is a founding board member and treasurer of Legacy Philanthropy Works in Santa Barbara and serves as board treasurer of Canopy, a nonprofit dedicated to bringing the life-giving benefits of trees to schools, neighborhoods and public spaces throughout the San Francisco mid-peninsula. Shelley's recent clients include the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund and the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences at Stanford University where she wrote a series of case studies on systems change leadership.
Shelley holds an MBA and certificate of Public Management from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. She earned her BA, magna cum laude, from Brown University, where she captained the women's ultimate frisbee team and wrote for the Brown Daily Herald.
Shelley lives in Portland, ME with her family and enjoys yoga, playing soccer and coaching youth sports.
Thought leadership
