Randi K Shade

In May 2008, Randi Shade, an 18 year resident of Austin, Texas, ran for and won a spot on the city’s City Council. Prior to that she served as the Executive Director of the Austin Entrepreneurs Foundation, and as CEO of CharityGift, an Internet company she founded in 1999 and sold to a publicly traded company in 2005. Randi began her career at Procter & Gamble, and later worked for Texas Governors Ann Richards and George W. Bush, serving as founding executive director of the Texas Commission on Volunteerism and Community Service, during which time she launched and managed the AmeriCorps program statewide. She also served as director of national development for City Year, and was awarded an Echoing Green Foundation-Harvard Public Management Fellowship to work for Teach for America in its inaugural year. Randi has always been an active community volunteer and has served on the boards of the Association of Women in Technology–Austin, Austin Clean Energy Initiative, Austin Entrepreneurs Foundation, Central Texas Better Business Bureau, Foundation for Women’s Resources Committee of the Board, Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Austin, OneStar Foundation, PeopleFund, Sigma Delta Tau Sorority’s Texas Education Foundation, TexChange, Texas Hillel Foundation, UT Commission on 125, and the Volunteer Center (now Hands on Central Texas). She earned a BA at the University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from Harvard Graduate School of Business. She and her partner Kayla and their two children, Ethan and Emme, make their home in Austin, TX. Randi is a member of the 2005 class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute.