Katherine Fulton
Over the past 40 years, Katherine’s career has spanned journalism, teaching, and consulting. In recent years, she has become well known as an expert on the rapidly shifting terrain of philanthropy and impact investing. She has worked closely with many of this generation’s leading philanthropists, major foundations and rising social entrepreneurs, helping them make their aspirations braver and their actions wiser. She has also authored many publications on the future of philanthropy, served on numerous governing boards, and given dozens of major speeches, including one at the main TED conference.
Katherine’s work draws upon her own life experiences of change, healing, and transformation. A native Virginian, she learned the importance of philanthropy and community service through the example of her family’s leadership. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in history and literature, Katherine began her career back in the South, where she covered politics for a major daily newspaper. Later she co-founded The North Carolina Independent, an award-winning investigative newspaper, which won her both a foundation prize for community service and a year of study as a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.
After leaving journalism in the early 1990s, she taught in the Public Policy Institute at Duke University before moving to California to work side-by-side with leaders at Global Business Network (GBN). There she learned from world-class futurists, mastered the scenario planning toolkit and advised leaders in more than a dozen industries as they sought to adapt more skillfully to rapid change. As GBN merged twice (into Monitor Group and then Deloitte Consulting), Katherine spent more than a decade building a leading social sector consulting practice as president of Monitor Institute. This innovative social enterprise, hosted and supported by the parent firms, applies world-class consulting tools and talent to major social and environmental challenges. She recently retired from Monitor Institute to work independently and enjoy living in the Sonoma wine country with her wife, Katharine Kunst.
