Jennifer McCrea is a senior research fellow at the Hauser Institute for Civil Society at Harvard University and the co-founder and CEO of Born Free Africa, an initiative of the Millennium Development Goals Health Alliance that brings private sector resources and expertise to the goal of eradicating mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
For the past 27 years, she has partnered with philanthropists, board members, and nonprofit leaders to think more creatively and collaboratively about ways in which to align strategic direction and resources. McCrea has worked with a wide range of organizations including, among others, Acumen, DonorsChoose.org, Grameen America, Council on Foreign Relations, Teach for America, NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Pencils of Promise, charity: water, Witness, Mercy Corps, Comic Relief, X Prize Foundation, Creative Commons, VisionSpring, and Robin Hood Foundation.
In addition to her popular Course in Exponential Fundraising at Harvard, she has led seminars and workshops for Ashoka, Skoll World Forum, TED, Board Source, Social Venture Philanthropy, Draper Richards Kaplan, New Profit, Echoing Green, Harvard Business School, Wharton, Oxford University, and many others.
McCrea serves as chairman of the advisory board at the MIT Media Lab and is a Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. She is also a member of the board of Just Capital, Pioneer Works, and the Quincy Jones MusiQ Consortium, and on the advisory board of Target Zero and the Blue School.
McCrea’s book, The Generosity Network, written with philanthropist Jeffrey C. Walker, was published by Crown Publishing at Random House.
