John Cooper is a managing partner at Milestone Partners. In a 30-years business career he has been active in line management, internal and external consulting, effectiveness training, strategic planning, organization design, change management, and executive coaching. Cooper has served dozens of Chicago-area clients, including Fortune 100 companies and nonprofit organizations. Former president of the Organizational Development Network of Chicago, he has served on the Human Resource Association of Chicago’s board of directors and has been certified in various development tools, including Center for Creative Leadership Benchmarks 360 and the Hogan Leadership Assessment Series. Cooper earned an MS in organizational development at Aurora University and trained in advanced coaching through the International Gestalt Coaching Program.
Before joining Northwestern University, Dr. Croft served as executive vice president and chief financial officer for Chicago’s Field Museum, from 1984 to 2015. For several years he served concurrently as the museum’s chief development officer, managing the annual giving, major gifts, planned giving, and corporate and foundation giving programs. He was also responsible for a major capital campaign that successfully concluded in 2008. Prior to his work at the Field Museum, he also held positions in social service administration as a community center executive director, finance officer, and chief business officer.
Dr. Croft serves as the academic director for nonprofit financial management programs in the Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Nonprofit Management at Northwestern University and is a faculty member of the university’s School of Professional Studies. He teaches as well in the College of Business at the University of Nebraska - Lincoln, and serves as a management consultant for several nonprofit organizations.
In 2016, he was appointed to a four-year appointment with the Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) Nonprofit Advisory Committee (NAC). The NAC advises FABS staff on accounting standards that are used by nonprofit organizations in the United States.
Dr. Croft is also a member of the board of directors for Great Lakes Advisors, LLC (a Wintrust Company) and the Illinois Institute of Independent Colleges and Universities.
He received a PhD from the University of Nebraska, where his doctoral work focused on higher education leadership and nonprofit financial management.
Holly Falk-Krzesinski
Currently teaching:
Grantsmanship for the Research Professional
Holly J. Falk-Krzesinski, PhD, is the Vice President for Global Academic & Research Relations for Elsevier. Falk-Krzesinski is focused on strategic initiatives, partnerships, and stakeholder needs at research institutions and federal funding agencies. Her engagement activities emphasize collaboration opportunities related to scholarly and research communication, research development, research information management, and strategic planning for the research enterprise. Prior to joining Elsevier, Falk-Krzesinski had been a faculty member in the college of arts & sciences and school of medicine at Northwestern University where she led initiatives related to research development, grantsmanship, and team science. She facilitated a multitude of trans-institutional collaborative grant programs spanning art history to bioenergy to translational medicine, with a special interest on approaches to evaluating collaboration and interdisciplinary research effectiveness and policies that support researchers engaged in these activities. Through her leadership with the Annual International Science of Team Science (SciTS) Conference, Falk-Krzesinski has been instrumental in developing a strong, interdisciplinary community of practice for team science and interdisciplinary research training. In 2008, Falk-Krzesinski launched the National Organization of Research Development Professionals (NORDP), first serving as the organization’s founding president and then chair of membership until 2012. Falk-Krzesinski has her B.S. in biological sciences, with honors, and a chemistry minor from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and received her PhD in microbiology and immunology from Loyola University of Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. She returned to UIC at the medical school for her postdoctoral fellowship in host-microbial pathogen interactions and conducted research at Abbott Laboratories in the pharmaceutical products group developing the first HIV protease inhibitor. Falk-Krzesinski also earned a Certificate of Professional Development in Nonprofit Management from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Michael Lindenmayer is the cofounder and CEO of Toilet Hackers, a social enterprise focused on securing 100 percent sanitation for the 2.6 billion people living without a toilet or lacking water, sanitation, or hygiene skills. A purpose-driven entrepreneur, writer, and systems designer, he advises Sesame Workshop’s Global Health Initiative and serves on the advisory board of the Girl’s Fund at the World Wide Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. He collaborates with the leading minds at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, where he is an associate fellow with the New Paths to Purpose Project. Lindenmayer started his finance career in the New York and London offices of Morgan Stanley and developed his first wellness and spa ventures in Europe, the United States, and Latin America. He is the coauthor of Charity and Philanthropy for Dummies and coauthor of a forthcoming book with Arthur Gensler, the founder of the world’s largest design firm.
Nitika Nautiyal is the co-founder of the ‘Business Services Collective’ a social impact organization focused on reducing the racial wealth gap by supporting the financial health of BIPOC firms through a shared back-office function. BSC partners with traditional nonprofits serving small businesses across the Midwest to create a network of BIPOC professional services providers in local markets who serve firms of color within the construction industry. Nitika co-founded BSC as a collective ownership model for wealth creation through entrepreneurship, which originated as a consulting engagement of her social impact advisory firm, Impact with Empathy.
Before BSC, Nitika served as the Executive Director of CASE, the Chicago Anchors for a Strong Economy program of World Business Chicago. As a regional network of anchor institutions, CASE was committed to collectively impacting inclusive growth in Chicagoland through their procurement and supply chain. Prior to CASE, Nitika worked in the financial inclusion space through her work at Allies for Community Business (formerly ACCION), SEWA Bharat and most recently as a co-founder of a fintech startup called CreditServe.
Nitika holds an undergraduate degree in finance from Shri Ram College of Commerce, University of Delhi, an MSW from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.Nitika is currently a Bridging Fellow with the Independent Sector. She has been a ‘Presidential Leadership Scholar’, Class of 2017 and an American Express NGEN Fellow, Class of 2019. She lives near Chicago with her husband and their son.
Terrence Roche
Terrence serves as Vice President of Professional Services at Start Early, a national nonprofit whose mission is to advance quality early learning for families with children before birth through their earliest years to help close the opportunity gap. At Start Early, Terrence leads efforts to develop and scale a portfolio of early-childhood workforce professional development offerings across the United States.
Previously, Terrence was Senior Vice President for Strategy & Operations at Kellen, a global professional services organization that specializes in working with nonprofit associations. In this role, he led an organizational change and operational excellence program while managing company operations that helped staff support the success of clients, including Strategy, Technology, Education, Internal Communications, Customer Service, and Office Services. Prior to Kellen Company, Terrence held a variety of roles over 12 years at YMCA of the USA, the national office for the largest nonprofit in the U.S. leading functions related to strategy, product development, quality improvement, change management, project management, program evaluation, and grantsmanship.
Terrence is a decorated veteran who served as an Officer in the United States Marine Corps with an overseas deployment supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. He also was an Advanced General Manager at Cintas Corporation. Terrence earned a Master of Science in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy and holds a Bachelor of Science in Management from the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University. Terrence is a volunteer for Race Conscious Dialogues, and in addition to teaching in SPS, he also is an instructor in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern.
Anne Smith
Currently teaching:
Major Gift Fundraising from Individuals, Corporations & Foundations
Anne Smith is a Senior Vice President at Ter Molen Watkins & Brandt (TW&B), providing nonprofit development consulting services. She offers clients two decades of experience, providing counsel to address a broad range of fundraising and development needs, including capital campaigns and campaign feasibility studies, development assessments and plans, major gift program development, board development and training, and executive search. She is dedicated to advancing the mission of her clients and effectively preparing them with the tools to be successful. Anne’s background of management and director-level positions strengthened on-going fundraising programs and built or expanded new ones. She began her development career at the American Medical Association Foundation (AMAF), where she managed a $10 million major gift campaign from the silent phase to its conclusion, built AMA Foundation’s annual giving program and later, expanded their ongoing major gift program, incorporating planned giving and endowment funds. Smith holds a BA from Western Illinois University has benefited from non-profit professional studies at North Park University and the Major Gift Fundraising course she is now teaching at Northwestern’s School of Professional Studies.
Paul Winters
Paul Winters is a partner at Wagenmaker & Oberly, providing legal services for the firm’s wide array of nonprofit clients and other entities—including religious organizations, educational institutions, public charities, social welfare groups, and trade associations. Winters manages the law firm’s corporate practice group, advising nonprofits throughout the nonprofit lifecycle: from formation to ongoing operations including contracts and agreements, to key transitions such as merger, affiliations, and dissolution. He assists officers and directors understand their fiduciary duties and develop robust structures to promote proper governance. Winters holds a BA from Virginia Tech, an MDiv from Trinity International University, and a JD from DePaul University College of Law.