Jilly Gokalgandhi

Director

Jilly has worked on nearly every side of the social sector: as a funder, an elected official, a policy analyst, and a practitioner inside schools. Her work spans education, workforce development, economic opportunity, and community investment. She is especially interested in how institutions make decisions under pressure, and in the leadership practices that help groups take on hard problems together.

Jilly’s career started in Milwaukee, writing grants and analyzing policy for the city’s workforce board. From there she moved into a high school, working as a community school coordinator at Bradley Tech, where she saw up close what it takes for programs to reach students and families. That ground-level view followed her into philanthropy, first at Rockwell Automation and then at the American Family Insurance Institute for Corporate and Social Impact, where she spent nearly six years managing a national grantmaking portfolio.

In 2021, she ran for the Milwaukee Public Schools board and won, becoming the first South Asian American elected to public office in the city. She served four years, including as Vice President, and learned how much good governance depends on building trust across people who disagree. After her term, she helped the Ruth Nelson Family Foundation in Tulsa build its grantmaking program from the ground up.

Jilly earned her MPA from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she focused on adaptive leadership, group relations, and collective memory studies. She also holds a BA in international affairs and economics from Marquette University.