Osagie joins Echoing Green with more than 15 years of senior leadership experience designing and scaling culturally relevant, inclusive, and equitable programs in education, nonprofits, and philanthropy.
New York, NY — December 2, 2021 — Last month, Echoing Green, a global nonprofit organization that finds, funds, and supports emerging leaders with the best ideas for social innovation, welcomed Dr. Kimberly E. Osagie as the vice president of programs. The organization has a community of nearly 1,000 members that includes past Fellows like First Lady Michelle Obama, the founders of organizations like Teach For America, Data For Black Lives, and One Acre Fund, and public figures like Van Jones.
Osagie comes to Echoing Green with more than 15 years of senior leadership experience in education, nonprofits, and philanthropy. She most recently served as founding Partner for Diverse, Inclusive, and Equitable Talent Strategy at Promise54, a national talent consulting firm for mission-driven organizations, where she supported a $1M portfolio of client organizations, coached over 100 senior executives, and co-authored the three-part interactive series DEI in Action: A Radically Human Approach to Case Studies.
In this position, Osagie will lead the strategy and design of Echoing Green’s programs to select and support hundreds of breakthrough social innovators around the world. With her expertise in global pedagogy, equitable systems design, and inclusive talent strategy, she will manage the teams disbursing grants and providing leadership and strategic support to innovative social change leaders working in more than 85 countries.
“We’re so thrilled to have Kimberly as part of Echoing Green’s executive leadership and guiding our dynamic programs team,” said Echoing Green President Cheryl L. Dorsey, who is also a 1992 Fellow. “Our ambitious work ahead requires new ways of thinking and doubling-down on our investments in transformational leaders dismantling inequitable systems. Kimberly’s leadership will ensure our programs deliver on impact, inclusion, and equity as we support those who are advancing racial justice, climate action, education equity, and more around the world.”
Osagie joins the organization at a pivotal time as Echoing Green continues to advance the programmatic goals of its Racial Equity Philanthropic Fund. The Fund, launched in summer 2020 to ensure that the social innovation field becomes an essential actor in the historic movement toward racial justice, supports emerging and established social entrepreneurs building a future free from racism and other oppressive systems across the world. Osagie will refine and expand programs across the full arc of the Fellow experience — from managing the selection process to facilitating formal and informal connections among Fellows across issue areas, Fellowship class, and region.
“Echoing Green has been on the forefront of social innovation for decades, and I’m humbled by the opportunity to both iterate and innovate to support this global community of changemakers,” Osagie said. “I deeply believe that our best solutions come from leaders who are proximate to the issue—those who the status quo would label as ‘risky’— and we’re in the business of disrupting that narrow, untrue narrative. Echoing Green Fellows are tackling the root causes of complex and interconnected challenges, and I’m eager to leverage my experience as a founder, program designer, grantmaker, and racial equity strategist to support that herculean effort.”
Osagie was selected as a Pahara Fellow for education leadership in 2014, earned a Derek Bok Center for Teaching Excellence Award at Harvard in 2017, and completed an Equity Lab Seeding Disruption fellowship for her interest in place-based approaches to disrupting inequity in 2020. She holds a doctorate in Education Leadership from Harvard University, a Master of Science in Teaching from Pace University, and undergraduate degrees in English and Political and Social Thought from the University of Virginia.
About Echoing Green:
Echoing Green has been on the front lines of solving the world’s biggest problems since 1987, raising up the transformational leaders willing to speak truth to power and challenge the status quo. The organization finds emerging leaders with the best ideas for social innovation as early as possible and sets them on a path to lifelong impact.
Media Contact:
Soumya Misra
soumya@echoinggreen.org
