Building on a Strong Foundation: Sowing the Seeds for Greater Scale, Impact and Equity

By Ali Knight, Chief Executive Officer, GreenLight Fund

These first three months as GreenLight Fund‘s next CEO has offered me an opportunity to get to know the team, the model, our partners, and the communities we serve. After just 90 days, it’s abundantly clear that GreenLight, in its 20 years across 13 cities, has developed a model that articulates a compelling theory of change and has shown irrefutable proof of concept. My deepest gratitude to co-founder Margaret Hall whose leadership and vision have guided the organization the past 20 years to incredible impact and scale. 

With new leadership, there is the expectation that a new approach and a bold new vision comes along too. But the truth is, any leader joining an organization that has achieved what GreenLight has achieved must take time to listen to learn in order to lead. In doing so, I learned pretty quickly that the big ideas to seed the new bold vision for GreenLight have been sowed during the pandemic and the racial justice uprising of the past four years. GreenLight’s ability to navigate these unprecedented times and still remain clear-eyed on its mission and steady in its march towards its vision has changed the organization in permanent and high-potential ways.  

Early on during my onboarding, it became quite apparent that GreenLight is a place that will allow me to lean into my personal values of generosity, justice and community. It is a place primed for a leader like me: a public servant who views philanthropy as an investment in justice, who believes that innovation and equity can lead to greater impact at scale. A crusader for justice whose personal story is proof that investing in human resilience and untapped potential is a path out of poverty and towards inclusive prosperity. It is incredibly clear to me that GreenLight is where I’m supposed to be. 

GreenLight culture is one of strength and a deep commitment to community-driven results. The GreenLight team is comprised of talented, dedicated leaders— leaders with different lengths of tenure and history with the organization; leaders with different identities and experiences (professional and lived) that they bring to the work every day; leaders who are all committed to GreenLight’s values and the GreenLight Method, and to working in service of building something stronger and further-reaching for the next 20 years. 

It is this culture, this assembly of talent, this collective commitment to results, where the seeds of a broader vision for GreenLight’s future begin to bloom. Together, we are co-illustrating a vision that builds on the foundation of 20 years of impact. One that creates room for more innovation, continuing to drive change and further equity in our communities, and builds national momentum by leveraging the impact of GreenLight locally and across the national network.

The seeds of this broader vision for the future of GreenLight are:

• Broader and Deeper Scale – A continued commitment to implementing GreenLight’s locally-driven model in more communities, reaching more children, youth and families across all sites, and deepening our presence in existing communities. 
• Performance in Service of Impact – Ensure our approach, infrastructure and team have what’s needed to scale and deliver growing impact while living our values, and learning from our growth.  
• Strengthen the National Network – With more scale and consistently positive results, establishing a national agenda that braids local innovation with national strategy and advances GreenLight’s impact beyond the sum of its parts.  
• Focus on Equity – Through a commitment to equity, innovation and community voice, we continue journeying down the path to realize a deep commitment to our vision of inclusive prosperity. 

These ideas are not entirely new, yet they bring focus to the opportunity to grow with purpose while leaning into what works well and continuing to innovate to reach our goals.  

The early learnings from my listening tour have confirmed what I suspected: GreenLight’s journey to greater scale and greater impact was paved by the learnings from our history and will be forged by current and future partnerships at the individual, community, local and national level. 

I am energized as we enter this next phase together. Emerging from the transformation of these past four years in parallel with a leadership transition in a way that is stronger, more strategic, and more clear-eyed about the future we are investing in and innovating towards; it is a powerful place to start. I’m excited to get to work!