Working with Guidelight, you get a dedicated team of experienced strategists and content developers who are exclusively focused on your fundraising and organizational goals.
Our team has decades of experience working with local and global social sector organizations across the spectrum of program areas and sectors. We have developed dozens of strategic plans, supported hundreds of grantees with organizational effectiveness, researched thousands of funders, written hundreds of LOI's, concept notes, proposals and reports, and helped clients raise millions of dollars.
Jennifer O'Connor, Founder and Chief Strategist
After over 8 years managing and evaluating food security and rural health programs in East Africa for a variety of international programs and governmental organizations, including the Gates Foundation and USAID, Jenny O'Connor founded Guidelight Strategies, a strategic consulting firm focused on the design, development, and implementation of strategic funding and program initiatives in the food/ag, environment, and conservation sectors. As the principal strategist and founding director of Guidelight Strategies, Jenny works at the intersection of capital and climate solutions, focusing her work primarily in the food and agriculture sector and developing systems based strategies and approaches to solving structural problems and challenges. 8 From 2019-2020, Jenny developed a national landscape analysis of the barriers for ranchers and farmers to transition to regenerative agriculture in the US, diving deeply into financial, supply chain, and policy barriers and opportunities. She published a 2020 report, sponsored by Patagonia, highlighting her work: Barriers for Farmers and Ranchers to Adopt Regenerative Agriculture Practices in the US: Identifying Key Levers and Opportunities for Funders. She also supported the SAFSF (Sustainable Ag and Food Systems Funders) special project on US fiber systems, led by her colleague Sarah Kelley, and recently released a roadmap for investing in and revitalizing a national sustainable textile supply chain: The Fibers Roadmap: Integrated Capital Opportunities to Support U.S. Revitalization and Growth. Jenny was also selected as an RSF Integrated Capital Fellow for 2019, where she engaged with diverse forms of financial capital to address complex social and environmental problems through a set of intersectional lenses. As a member of Funders for Regenerative Agriculture (FORA), Jenny has served as the co-chair of the FORA US Policy Working Group, as well as an active role in the Strategic Communications Working Group, and now serves as Executive Director reporting to the Steering Committee
Consultants and Partners We Regularly Collaborate With
Sarah Kelley, Common Threads Consulting
Sarah R. Kelley is the founder of Common Threads Consulting, working with philanthropic clients to provide strategy development, research, impact assessment, and facilitation. She serves as Consultant/Project Director to SAFSF for its Special Project on Sustainable Fiber and Textiles, and she is the lead author of The Fibers Roadmap: Integrated Capital Opportunities to Support Revitalization of U.S.-Grown Fiber, Textiles, and Leather. Other recent work includes strategy development for a family foundation seeking to defend environmental health progress from libertarian and corporate influence; interview-driven analysis for the Guidelight Strategies/Patagonia regenerative agriculture landscape assessment, with a focus on racial equity in regenerative ag; and strategic planning and impact assessment for foundation and nonprofit clients. 9 Previously, Sarah served for 10 years as Senior Program Officer at the Island Foundation, where she directed the Environment portfolio and managed $1.2 million in annual grants. In that role she developed and implemented a program on equity, inclusion, and environmental justice, including an innovative cohort-based model for grantee equity training. Her prior food systems work includes serving as Executive Director of Southeastern Massachusetts Agricultural Partnership (SEMAP), lead researcher and co-author for the Southeastern Massachusetts Food System Assessment, and Research Coordinator for the Red Tomato Report to the Illinois Food and Community Funders Group. She is a Board member and Treasurer of New England Grassroots Environment Fund, where she supports the Fund’s innovative participatory grantmaking model. Sarah holds an M.S. in Plant and Soil Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a B.A. in History from Yale. She was selected as a 2018-19 RSF Integrated Capital Fellow, focusing on integrating investment and grantmaking strategies to drive change.
Dr. David LeZaks, Senior Fellow at Croatan Institute
David LeZaks, Ph.D., Senior Fellow at Croatan Institute, is an environmental scientist and financial activist whose work is centered around developing innovative mechanisms for financing the transition to agroecological farming and food systems. Before joining Croatan Institute, Dr. LeZaks led the Regenerative Food Systems initiative at Delta Institute in Chicago, where he managed a portfolio of projects that focused on the design and deployment of disruptive mechanisms to unlock substantial capital flows into regenerative agriculture. Previously, he served as an RSF Social Finance Integrated Capital Institute fellow. Earlier in his career, David was a postdoctoral scientist at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, where he completed his Ph.D. in Environment and Resources and an M.S. in Land Resources. Afterward, he served as Managing Scientist of the Knowledge Systems for Sustainability Consortium and Program Director of the university’s Agricultural Innovation Prize. Currently, he serves in advisory roles to Mad Agriculture, the Savanna Institute, Nourish^n, Council of Development Finance Agencies’ Food Systems Finance Advisory Council, and the Transformational Investing in Food Systems initiative, an allied initiative of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food. He is based in Madison, Wisconsin, where he is active in a number of community organizations and spends his spare time gardening and participating in a variety of silent sports.
Mandy Ellerton, Chief Operating Officer at Bionutrient Food Association
Mandy serves as the Chief Operating Officer at the Bionutrient Food Association, an organization focused on increasing quality in the food supply. She also works as an independent consultant focused on food and healthcare systems transformation. Mandy recently concluded nine years at the Bush Foundation, a place-based, private foundation in the Midwest. As a senior leader at the Foundation, she created and led the groundbreaking Community Innovation programs that funded cross-sector social innovation projects focused on advancing equity in a variety of fields. During her tenure, these programs provided nearly $80 million in grants all across the Foundation’s region, with nearly 25% going to projects led by and for Native nations. She also developed and led the Foundation’s Social Business Ventures Initiative and worked with the Foundation’s executive leadership and board investment committee to develop its race equity and place-based impact investing strategy. Mandy came to the Foundation from Grassroots Solutions, a national grassroots organizing and strategy firm where she led both legislative advocacy projects and strategy consulting for foundations and the private sector. Mandy holds a master’s degree in social work from the University of Minnesota, with a concentration in community organizing, and a B.A. degree from St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. She is also a trained nutritional therapist. She was named one of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal’s “40 Under 40” awardees in 2020; named a Fellow in RSF Social Finance’s 2018-2019 Integrated Capital Institute; and selected for the Young American Leaders Program at Harvard Business School in 2016.
Diana Rothschild, Corporate Sustainability Consultant
I use business as a catalyst to solve the world’s most pressing needs. From an entrepreneur supporting family sustainability and the ‘future of work’ to spending seven years as a sustainability strategist independently, with McKinsey, Blu Skye and currently Guidelight Strategies - I advise leaders to create financial, social, and environmental value in ways that drive shareholder value, enhance business models, and increase customer/employee loyalty. Prior to that, I spent four years at Walmart in Operations & Merchandising. I worked with Walmart’s CEO to launch their sustainability program – focusing on packaging, waste, organic cotton financing, leadership dev, and employee sustainability. As a strategy, change management, and operations systems thinker, I work cross-functionally to establish shared objectives, prioritize focus areas, and figure out how to achieve them through strong, thoughtful execution. I value innovating, making everyday lives better, and having a meaningful impact. I received my B.S. from UC Berkeley’s, Haas School of Business, and my MBA from Stanford. I live in San Francisco with my husband, two young daughters, and three backyard hens.