Fay Hanleybrown has more than 25 years of experience advising foundations, philanthropists, corporations, and nonprofit clients on strategy, systems change, and cross-sector collaboration. She leads FSG’s US Consulting practice, overseeing a team of consultants working across philanthropic strategy, CSR and Shared Value, collective impact and collaborative approaches, and strategic learning and evaluation.
Since joining FSG in 2002, she has worked with a wide range of social sector clients on issues spanning workforce development, economic mobility, community philanthropy, health equity, and education. Recent clients include the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walmart Foundation, the Schultz Family Foundation, the Aspen Institute, and the Carlson Family Foundation. She has also led a number of engagements focused on designing and launching cross-sector collaborations. Fay is a co-founder of the Collective Impact Forum, a global network of more than 34,000 practitioners, and of Talent Rewire, a national initiative advancing economic mobility for frontline workers. She speaks and writes regularly on philanthropic effectiveness, systems change, and collective impact.
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
We are at an inflection point in philanthropy. The problems we’re trying to solve — inequality, climate, health, and economic exclusion — are too complex and too urgent for any single funder to crack alone. I’ve spent my career helping foundations, corporations, and nonprofits work across sectors to build the kind of collaborative, adaptive approaches that can enable lasting change. That work has never felt more important than it does today.
