Fay Hanleybrown has nearly 20 years of experience advising foundations, corporations, and nonprofit clients across a range of issues, including strategy development, organizational alignment, and evaluation.
Fay established FSG’s west coast presence when she opened the San Francisco office in 2002. She currently leads FSG’s Seattle office and Collective Impact approach area. She has advised a variety of clients, including private foundations, community foundations, private corporations, and nonprofits across a range of critical issues including education, global development, community philanthropy, and corporate social responsibility. Recent clients include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft, The Ford Family Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Community Center for Education Results. She has also led a number of engagements focused on designing and launching cross-sector collaborations. Fay speaks regularly about philanthropic effectiveness, collective impact, and shared measurement.
Before FSG
Prior to FSG, Fay worked for McKinsey & Company, where she consulted to both for-profit and nonprofit organizations and was a member of the Social Sector Practice. While a student at Harvard, she worked with business school professors Michael Porter and Allen Grossman on a research study entitled “Optimizing the Value of Philanthropy” that examined ways to increase foundation impact. Fay began her career at investment bank UBS Warburg in Hong Kong, where she was a Vice President and co-led the regional financial institutions equity research team. Responsible for UBS Warburg’s investment strategy for Asian banks, she was ranked by Institutional Investor as one of the best equity research analysts in Asia.
Education
- Harvard Business School, MBA
- Princeton University, BA, cum laude in economics and politics
On Working At FSG
I wake up every morning excited to get to work. I love FSG’s entrepreneurial and caring culture, and our dedication to finding better solutions to tough social problems. My father served in the military, and as a child I had the opportunity to travel extensively and to witness first-hand dire poverty, as well as the incredible strength and resilience of my fellow human beings—an experience that set me on a course to work towards social change. At FSG, I am inspired and energized by the opportunity to work with bright, talented colleagues and clients who share my passion for making a difference in the world. I have had the opportunity to work on a wide variety of issues over the past ten years at FSG, from microfinance in Africa to increasing post-secondary attainment in the US to reducing poverty in rural communities. Most recently, I have been excited about the opportunity to build stronger cross-sector partnerships around key social issues to achieve greater collective impact.
