News and Resources

Common Impact Expands Board, Appoints New Leadership for Finance and IT

Posted: September 24, 2009

Common Impact, a nonprofit organization that brings together global companies and local nonprofits to build stronger communities through employee engagement programs, announced today three additions to its Board and staff. Following the August appointment of Jenne Griffin, who is leading Common Impact's expansion into new geographic regions, the Board and management additions will bolster Common Impact's continued growth into the communities that benefit from its services.

A new Board member
Anne Punzak Marcus has accepted a role on Common Impact's Board of Directors, which currently includes leaders from business and nonprofit organizations such as Fidelity Investments, Version 2.0 Communications and Mass Mentoring Partnership. As a leading advocate for children's mental health issues, and a former executive at Fidelity Investments, Marcus brings a unique perspective to the kinds of challenges and opportunities that Common Impact's corporate-nonprofit partnership model addresses.

Marcus currently is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Park School and also serves on the Advocacy and Government Relations Committee of the Autism Consortium, a disease based collaboration involving 14 Boston area institutions, to advance understanding and treatment of developmental brain disorders. Anne is also a member of Dana Farber's Women Cancers' Visiting Committee and is a former member and past board chair of the Board of Directors of Families First, a not-for-profit dedicated to providing parenting education and support.

Internal and external IT expertise
In addition to Anne Marcus joining the Board, Common Impact has announced the addition of Krishnan Badrinarayanan to its team. As an IT consultant, Badrinarayanan will manage dual responsibilities for IT systems creation and performance, both within Common Impact and on behalf of its nonprofit partners. Externally, he will identify high-performing nonprofits who would benefit from IT project support, devise technology solutions for those clients, and facilitate successful relationships between nonprofits and employee-volunteer teams from corporate partners who implement these projects.

Badrinarayanan also will play a key role overseeing Common Impact's systems and technical operations as the organization expands into new geographies including New York, New York; Richmond, Virginia; and the Research Triangle of North Carolina. Specifically, he will design Common Impact's internal IT systems strategy and model growth and development opportunities in new geographies to help expand the organization's IT services to nonprofits in those areas.

New support for finance management
Joanne Sanders also has accepted a position at Common Impact, as director of finance. In this role, Sanders will both manage traditional finance tasks and develop a financial management system that ties to a more complex footprint as the nonprofit grows in size and scope. Specifically, Sanders will manage payments, prepare financial statements, manage the annual financial audit and create more sophisticated modeling and analysis of cost structure, pricing, cash flow, and growth opportunities.

Before joining Common Impact, Sanders' 20-plus year career in finance has included roles at emerging nonprofits such as Greater Boston Legal Services and the New England Wildlife Center, where she most recently served as director of finance and systems. In that role, Sanders was responsible for project-managing the design development, financing and construction of 22,000 sq. ft. "green" wildlife hospital and environmental education center. Sanders also was a founding team manager and finance director for the South Shore Charter School, one the first independent, public K-12 charter schools in Massachusetts.

"We are so pleased to welcome Anne Marcus to our Board and Krishnan and Joanne to our team," said Common Impact Managing Director and Co-Founder Theresa Ellis. "As we expand to serve an ever-growing number of nonprofits and corporate partners in new regions, we need the right people in place to address the complexities and maximize the opportunities these changes will bring. We look forward to the expertise and strategic counsel each of these talented individuals will bring to our work in the months and years to come."

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