Eric Kessler

Eric Kessler is the founder and a Senior Managing Director of Arabella Advisors, a social venture firm dedicated to making philanthropy more effective. He has worked with foundations and individual philanthropists across the country to build effective grant making strategies, conduct evaluations of their grantees, improve their administration efficiency and manage projects on issues ranging from environment to education to global health, many of which involve a public policy and political advocacy component.

Eric also founded and serves as president of the New Venture Fund, an innovative, independent 501(c)(3) organization that coordinates donor collaboratives, serves as a global grant-making intermediary, and provides fiscal sponsorship to new project ideas inspired by philanthropists and foundations. He is also a co-founder of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy and sits on the Boards of Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers, and the James Beard Foundation.

Earlier in his career, Eric worked in politics with the League of Conservation Voters, as an appointee in the Clinton Administration and promoting democractic reforms overseas with the National Democratic Institute.