Jeri Eckhart Queenan

Jeri Eckhart Queenan joined Bridgespan in 2007 and is a partner in the Boston office. Over the course of her career she has held leadership positions in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors. Jeri has led Bridgespan’s Global Practice since its inception in 2008. Her work at Bridgespan includes precedent-setting projects with Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women, an initiative that has achieved strong measurable results by empowering underserved women entrepreneurs in over 60 countries and the Ford Foundation’s $1B BUILD program. She has led similar high-impact engagements with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiative, Salvation Army, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, United Nations Foundation, Camfed and Global Teen Challenge, and is an advisor to the Audacious Project. Jeri leads Bridgespan’s multiyear initiative to strengthen nonprofit organizations by improving the way they are funded, as described in her two popular articles, "Pay-What-It-Takes Philanthropy," (Stanford Social Innovation Review, Summer 2016) and “Stop Starving Scale: Unlocking the Potential of Global NGOs” (Bridgespan.org, April 2013). Jeri has co-authored additional articles on women’s entrepreneurship, scaling impact, and performance measurement including, "Designing for Transformative Scale: Global Lessons in What Works," (Rotman School of Management magazine, January 2015)," and “Measurement as Learning,” (Bridgespan.org, April 2011). She is a frequent public speaker with recent talks at the MacDonald Conference for Leaders of Character, Global Philanthropy Forum, InterAction, and the Harvard Global Development Conference. Prior to Bridgespan she served as a senior official in the Executive branch of government, first as White House Fellow and then Associate Deputy Secretary of Labor, overseeing line agencies with a combined annual budget of $28 billion. She led several Cabinet-level working groups on pension reform, steel industry restructuring and child care policy during her tenure. Later she served as chair and CEO of the White House Fellows Foundation in Washington, DC, president of the White House Fellows Alumni Association, and five-year member of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships. Jeri began her career in the corporate sector at the Boston Consulting Group where she advised multinational corporations in health care and telecommunications and was promoted early to manager. Jeri currently serves on the boards of Catholic Relief Services and St. Vincent College, and has served on many boards over the last 25 years, including MicroEnsure; BOMA Fund, National Organization on Disability, Langley School, Reliance Insurance. She’s been a lector in the Catholic Church for 27 years. Jeri graduated Phi Beta Kappa/summa cum laude from UCLA and received her MBA with honors from Harvard Business School. Jeri has been married to Charlie Queenan for 35 years. They have four adult children – Mike, Max, C. J., and Jenna - ages 22 to 29.