Senior Director of Programs, Fledgling Fund

Emily joined The Fledgling Fund in 2008, with a background rooted in creativity and social good. She began her career co-founding a women’s rights and reproductive health center in the Kibera Slum of Nairobi. She then went on to work in South African and NYC-based non-profits focused on women’s rights, health and community development.

In her role as the Senior Director of Programs at The Fledgling Fund, she identifies creative projects with the most impact potential to support through grants and in-kind resources. She then works with these filmmakers and digital storytellers—providing strategy consulting, making introductions and connections and supporting the filmmaker’s often-evolving social good vision. She also provides expertise in capturing, analyzing, and sharing social impact results from this work, so that we can more deeply understand the power of media to catalyze change. Emily directs the Fledgling Engagement Lab, an 18-month incubator for social issue documentary filmmakers seeking collaboration, mentorship and strategy support. Fledgling is using the Lab to learn and share wisdom about using creative media for social change back out to the field.

Emily has a B.A. in International Development, Communications and Anthropology from American University and an M.A. in International Development and Population Studies from The London School of Economics. The through-line of her career has been the power of story—well-crafted and thoughtfully-distributed—to change the way we think, act, and interact with one another.