Valerie Threlfall

Valerie Threlfall is Director of The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP’s) YouthTruth project, which is one of the first foundation-led efforts to gather and analyze comparative feedback from high school students about what is working and not working in their schools. YouthTruth was developed in 2008 by CEP and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Prior to joining CEP in March 2008, Valerie was a nonprofit strategy consultant, working with organizations such as Global Giving, Partners in Health, and Monitor Institute. She also spent five years at Momenta Pharmaceuticals, a start-up biotechnology company, joining the company as its twelfth employee and eventually leading the company’s strategic planning, marketing, and public policy efforts as Director of Commercial and Strategic Planning.

Valerie’s nonprofit experience includes working at Opportunity Finance Network, a national association of community development financial institutions. In this role, she published multiple papers on ‘theory of change’ planning and the importance of building effective impact measurement systems.

Valerie holds a joint MBA and MPP from Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, respectively. Valerie graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in Economics from Swarthmore College.