Cynthia W. Massarsky

(Vice President, Strategic Initiatives)

Cynthia W. Massarsky comes to GPN with a 35-year history in the nonprofit sector, where she has been at the forefront of the social enterprise and entrepreneurship movement. Most recently, she directed the Yale/Goldman Sachs National Business Plan Competition for Nonprofit Organizations - a program she created for the Pew Charitable Trusts, Goldman Sachs Foundation, and Yale School of Management. The program involved three annual competitions that provided significant monetary awards and consulting services to leading nonprofit organizations in social enterprise. In all, she managed an operation that evaluated more than 1,500 entrants, selected 24 award recipients, supervised 470 evaluators and consultants, designed a website of resources for the field, and held three annual conferences attended by more than 1,200 nonprofits, grantmakers, and academic scholars.

Ms. Massarsky is also principal of CWM Marketing Group, a consulting firm she founded 18 years ago. Specializing in marketing, new business development, and evaluation services for nonprofits, foundations, and corporate philanthropy, Ms. Massarsky has served clients including Save the Children; Carnegie Corporation of New York, Covenant House; The Pew Charitable Trusts; Bank Street College; AmeriCorps; Ford Foundation; Families and Work Institute; Goldman Sachs Foundation; Aspen Institute, Association of Junior Leagues International; Nonprofit Finance Fund; John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts; AmFAR; The Rockefeller Foundation; and U.S. Fund for UNICEF.

Previously, she held positions with Scholastic, Inc., Marlo Thomas' Free To Be Foundation at the Ms Foundation for Women, New Ventures (a consulting firm that guided nonprofits on earned income ventures), and The Foundation Center.

Ms. Massarsky has a number of publications to her credit, most recently, "Coming of Age: Social Enterprise Reaches Its Tipping Point" in Research on Social Entrepreneurship: Understanding and Contributing to an Emerging Field (ARNOVA Occasional Paper Series, Vol. III, June 2006); Generating and Sustaining Nonprofit Earned Income: A Guide to Successful Enterprise Strategies (Jossey-Bass Publishing, April 2004); and "Enterprise Strategies for Generating Revenue" in The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management (October 2004).

Massarsky earned a bachelor's degree from Simmons College and an M.B.A. from Cornell University.