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Center for Games & Impact

Learning for Social Impact Initiative

CGI Brown Bag with Laura Callanan, February 27, 2013 in the ASU Memorial Union. Co-sponsored by ASU Global Institute of Sustainability.

Laura CallananLaura Callanan is an independent consultant, author and teacher in the field of social innovation and social impact assessment. Currently, Laura is Scholar in Residence with the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership at UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

From 2008-2013, Laura was a consultant with McKinsey & Company’s Social Sector Office where she led work on foundation strategy and social innovation. As part of this work, she developed the Learning for Social Impact initiative. Her presentation will focus on best practices for social impact assessment, drawing on ideas contained in the white paper(see Learning for Social Impact: What Foundations Can Do), and McKinsey’s 3-step model for Learning Driven Assessment, and her wealth of experience on what works.

Laura was the lead author of From Potential to Action: Bringing Social Impact Bonds to the US, the most comprehensive report on this new public-private approach to scaling social services. She also was the primary investigator on a study Supporting Leaders Who Scale What Works, which looked at the capabilities and opportunities social sector leaders need to succeed.

Prior to joining McKinsey, she served as Senior Adviser at the United Nations Development Programme in the Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery. In her capacity as Executive Director of The Prospect Hill Foundation, Laura had led all aspects of the Foundation’s strategy development and grant making in the areas of environmental conservation, reproductive health and rights, and nuclear non-proliferation. She also served as Associate Director at The Rockefeller Foundation, where she had general management responsibility for all activities related to the $3 billion endowment, and investment responsibility for the Foundation’s venture capital and private equity portfolio.

Laura was a member of the Foundation’s Program Venture Experiment (ProVenEx) commitment committee and oversaw investment decisions for program-related investments and similar public-private activities. Laura’s undergraduate degree is from Barnard College of Columbia University and she holds an Master’s in Public Administration from the School of International and Public Administration of Columbia University. Laura is a frequent speaker at leading social sector conferences including the Skoll World Forum, SoCap, the annual Independent Sector Conference, and the Social Impact Exchange. She is an adjunct professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business where she teaches on the nonprofit capital marketplace.

Read more about Laura and the work discussed in the McKinsey and Company white paper, Learning for Social Impact.