Pronouns: she/her/hers
Taryn has a passion for learning and making the world a better place for everyone. During her time at Elevate, she has worked with a variety of educational, environmental, health, and housing clients—and now specializes in working with advocacy organizations. She is actively involved with our Learning & Development team, which aims to build a culture of learning at Elevate, and is a member of the Grant Professionals Association.
In addition to her prior grants consulting and university grants office experience, Taryn has also worked in museum administration, educational technology, and independent journalism. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Goucher University and a BA in Humanities from Roberts Wesleyan College.
Outside of work, Taryn is known as a collage artist and mural painter with a penchant for collecting oddities. She and her husband reside in Northwest Alabama with their dogs, Maple and Ginkgo.
Pronouns: she/her
As Vice President of Finance & Operations, Keisha provides financial and administrative leadership and strategic insight to ensure business practices align with the company’s core values. With over 15 years working in the nonprofit sector, Keisha has considerable knowledge and experience supporting mission-driven organizations dedicated to social change and justice.
Before joining Elevate, Keisha was Associate Director, Global Operations at 350.org, a global nonprofit committed to building a future safe from the effects of the climate crisis. In her role, she managed the operational budget, worked cross-functionally with teams to ensure financial health, and drove global expansion by establishing new offices in the UK and South Africa. At Fiver Children’s Foundation, a youth development organization, she served as the first Senior Director of Operations and established its operational practices and procedures.
Keisha is committed to supporting our global community, especially young people. As a volunteer, she led a grassroots initiative that gave students from the African diaspora in New York and Atlanta the opportunity to travel to Ghana for cultural enrichment and service-learning projects.
Keisha is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, DC, where she received a BFA in Theatre Arts Administration and Business Management.
She loves and is inspired by the creative arts and enjoys traveling as much as possible. She has visited 29 countries so far and captured a portfolio of photographs documenting her journeys.
Elena brings to Elevate a passion for nonprofits and nonprofit leadership as a catalyst for social change. Prior to joining Elevate, Elena worked for nonprofits in Denmark and the US, in the global health, environmental, civic engagement, and democracy sectors. Her development experience includes direct marketing, building fundraising capacity, major gifts, and grants at organizations such as Indivisible, League of Conservation Voters and League of Conservation Voters Education Fund, and Greenpeace.
Elena holds an MSc in Technological and Socio-Economic Planning from Roskilde University, Denmark, and a BA in History and Russian Studies from Bucknell University. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Transformative Social Change.
When not wrapped up in the world of grants, Elena loves to read, spend time with the family dogs and cats, and stream British TV and movies while enjoying a cup of Yorkshire Gold tea. She also enjoys growing wildflowers and native plants, reformer Pilates, and interrupting her husband whenever he watches YouTube videos.
Pronouns: she/her
Janelle has a passion for social justice and fairness in the global community. Her commitment to this ideal manifested in her work as a paralegal in Hawaii working for fair credit reporting laws. After relocating to Fredericksburg, Virginia, Janelle joined the staff at the Fredericksburg Area Museum and Cultural Center where she sought to inspire justice through her support of art and story at the Museum. While at the museum, Janelle worked as the volunteer coordinator, development assistant, and, most recently, as the education coordinator where she developed programs that used art education to confront historic and current injustices in her community. In an effort to expand the program’s reach to marginalized communities, Janelle began writing grants to fund scholarships for low income students.
In 2015, Janelle took a leap of faith at an opportunity to reduce her carbon footprint and bought a vintage sailboat to live aboard while undertaking its restoration. She apprenticed with a marine engineering company and learned the basics of sailing, marine electrical and mechanical maintenance, solar and wind power technologies, woodworking and varnishing, and crewed several coastal and offshore deliveries. In the summertime, Janelle teaches sailing in down east Maine and is working toward her Mate’s license through the US Coast Guard. Janelle also writes and edits articles for maritime publications.
Janelle holds BAs in Philosophy and American Studies from the University of Mary Washington, formerly Mary Washington College. She graduated cum laude and was the honors graduate in the American Studies department where she focused her studies on the political and cultural causes of the Civil War and the War’s lingering legacy. For her academic contributions in the civil rights field and her stated career goals, Janelle was awarded the James Farmer scholarship and was elected president of the college’s Phi Alpha Theta chapter.
When not at work, Janelle can be found at Fred’s Theatre where she acts, sells tickets, cultivates donors, cleans floors, or performs one of the other multitudes of jobs needed to ensure the show goes on! If Janelle had one piece of advice to give the world, it would be to find your creative self and nurture it.
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Sarah has been with Elevate since 2019 and is currently a Supervising Director, working with Grant Writers and Senior Grantwriters, and serving on Elevate’s Continuous Improvement team. Her passion lies in the performing arts, with a focus on theatre, puppetry, and the aerial arts. Over the past four years, Sarah has worked with many of Elevate’s arts and arts education clients, in addition to community organizing and policy advocacy nonprofits.
A founding company member of DC-based Pointless Theatre, Sarah spent the decade prior to joining Elevate creating adventurous art in the nation’s capital. She also enjoys volunteering with the Miss District of Columbia Scholarship organization, serving as Co-Producer for the annual competition and helping to prepare local titleholders for the national Miss America scholarship competition. She received a BA in Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Pronouns: she / her/ hers
Hallie is Elevate’s Supervising Director of Finance and Operations, leading our finance, data, and technology teams. She brings several years of experience in building out Elevate’s internal infrastructure to this leadership role, as she has held several positions in the department since first joining the company in 2018. Hallie was introduced to Elevate during her time as a fund development intern at the TGR Foundation – a previous client. She also brings experience as the Operations Manager at the American Immigration Council, supporting their Immigration Justice Campaign that works to provide legal representation to immigrants and end immigration detention. She has also worked with Olympic athletes as a Communications Intern at USA Water Polo and as a Corporate Partnerships intern with the Los Angeles Football Club.
Hallie earned her BS in Business Administration from Chapman University in Southern California with a minor in Philosophy, and has a financial leadership certification from Harvard Online Business School. In college, Hallie played NCAA softball for one year, and has a long history of volunteering with the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and Epilepsy Foundation, two causes near and dear to her. While she enjoys walking around DC with a coffee in hand, her heart is on the West Coast as she hails from the Pacific Northwest. In her free time, Hallie is enjoying live music and taking care of her many plants.
Pronouns: she/they
Alison Hight is a Director at Elevate, a leading grant writing firm that provides top-level development expertise to nonprofits nationwide. Her certification as a Fundraising Executive (CFRE) is a testament to her commitment to excellence. Alison has supported organizations focused on democracy, equity and social justice in the arts, youth and adult education, workforce development, healthcare, and international development. She brings deep issue knowledge in the arts, media, civic engagement, advocacy, and human rights, and is deeply engaged in women’s and gender issues.
Alison is a relationship developer and partnership identifier who excels at connecting people based on what excites them and the type of impact they want to have. She creates relationships where everyone can deepen their impact while sparking new ideas that can further their mutual visions. Alison is also an accomplished trainer and presenter who has developed internal and external training materials on essential fundraising topics and development activities. Her background in Visual Communications and Economics, as well as training in video and audio production, has allowed her to explore creative solutions to complex problems.
Alison is deeply committed to creating a more equitable and just philanthropic sector. She believes that fundraising is a critical tool for social change, and that it should be approached in a way that centers the values of equity, justice, and community power. Alison works to dismantle systemic barriers that have historically excluded marginalized communities from philanthropy, and advocates for funding models that prioritize community-driven solutions. Alison has developed and leads trainings on the power of language and how fundraisers can use it as active participants in creating more equitable philanthropy, the first of which she presented at the Grant Professional Association’s national conference in 2019.
Outside of work, Alison explores the human experience through experimental multi-disciplinary art and creative coding. She is also a transformational coach, avid reader, traveler, and coffee drinker. Alison’s favorite aspects of working at Elevate are the variety of clients she works with, the ongoing opportunities to learn, and feeling like she gets to be part of deepening the positive impact of people on the world.
Oumou is a Supervising Director at Elevate where she primarily manages Elevate’s outstanding Project Coordinators and leads work to support the company’s information, systems, and calendar management process across all teams.
Oumou first joined Elevate in 2017 as a Project Coordinator. In that time, she has served more than 25 nonprofit clients who work in a wide range of issue areas including Education, Civic Engagement, Social Services, Advocacy and Policy Change, and Food and Nutrition. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Outside of work, Oumou is an avid sports fan. She is particularly passionate about Formula 1. Oumou also enjoys loose-leaf tea, discovering new coffee roasters, house plants, and maintaining her spreadsheet with her favorite movies.
Pronouns: he/him/hers
Eric is Elevate’s Associate Vice President of Specialized Grant Services. In this role, he leads project-based services that leverage Elevate’s expertise to meet a wide array of institutional fundraising needs like prospect research, executive coaching, or complex proposal submissions. He also oversees Elevate’s external learning products, which provide a rotating calendar of informational and interactive webinars, as well as custom workshops or webinars for nonprofit organizations. Through these projects, Eric pursues a goal of supporting organizations in overcoming gaps in knowledge, capacity, or time to advance their institutional development program.
Eric joined Elevate in 2015 and in his roles as Grant Writer and Director supported more than 25 organizations in raising 20+ million dollars, with a focus on organizations working on systems change work through policy and advocacy. He especially enjoys helping nonprofits define a clear and concise theory of change that communicates their work and its impact. He has developed and facilitated a variety of workshops and webinars on fundraising for systems change, communicating impact, and preparing for federal grant applications, and has presented at the UL Innovative Education Award, Grant Professionals Association, and Providers’ Council annual conferences.
Eric is an avid plant dad and enjoys filling his home with as much greenery as it can fit (or as much as his cat and partner will tolerate). He is always down to trade cuttings or visit a plant shop.
