Shelley Whelpton

Shelley Whelpton is a managing director in Arabella’s Washington, DC office, where she leads the firm’s Mid-Atlantic practice. Shelley has over 20 years experience working across sectors to assess organizational assets, identify investment opportunities, develop key alliances, and chart strategic paths to meet ambitious objectives. Shelley’s work at Arabella focuses on leading teams of specialists to build customized plans for clients that integrate and maximize all aspects of their charitable assets, including grants, investments, relationships, and time. From 2007 to 2013, Shelley was the vice president of business development and strategy at The Sheridan Group, a Washington, DC-based policy firm dedicated to public interest causes. In this role, Shelley developed the firm’s social entrepreneurship consulting practice, working with grant makers and other clients to identify creative strategies and build cross-sector collaborations for broad-scale social change. Shelley’s development work with the Sheridan Group spanned a wide range of issue areas, including new social financing mechanisms, open access, education, youth development, child welfare, and health. Shelley is a seasoned nonprofit executive with national recognition in the field of international youth exchange. For 10 years, she managed AYUSA International, a nonprofit high-school exchange program serving 2,000 high-school students from 80 countries around the world. Shelley led the organization during a period of significant growth and program diversification, including a post-9/11 exchange initiative with the Middle East sponsored by the US Department of State. Shelley’s volunteerism focuses on women’s political leadership and youth-related causes. She is a founding board member of Running Start, a nonprofit dedicated to providing political leadership training for girls and young women. She also sits on the advisory board of Playworks, an organization that is leading a national movement to safeguard recess, promoting safe, inclusive, and physically engaging playground activities. She has led fundraising campaigns at her sons’ schools and coaches their athletic teams. Shelley graduated with honors from Williams College with a BA in political science, earning the Richard Krouse Political Science Award, and completed a master’s degree in education from Boston University.