Kristen McCormack

Kristen McCormack is an Executive-in-Residence and Senior Lecturer at the Boston University Questrom School of Business. She also serves as Faculty Director of the Institute for Nonprofit Management and Leadership.

McCormack teaches field based courses in the areas of Sustainability and Cross Sector Partnerships and is an advisor to the Sustainable Neighborhoods Lab. She also leads the popular Brazil Field Seminar which focuses on comparing US and Brazil sustainability and corporate social responsibility practices. Ms. McCormack’s work is focused on the effective leveraging of stakeholder groups to create the change that is required to build sustainable business enterprises.

Ms. McCormack has more than twenty five years of experience in the public, nonprofit and private sectors leading mission driven organizations and building social enterprises. She began her career in the nonprofit sector organizing community development projects including the Somerville and Dorchester Farmer’s Markets, two community gardens, a community development corporation and Community Works, an alternative workplace giving effort. As the Founding Executive Director of the Boston Food Bank McCormack worked with the food industry to address the growing issue of domestic hunger. Ms. McCormack served for nearly a decade in Boston city government as Director of the Mayor’s Office of Jobs and Community Services, Deputy Budget Director and Deputy Director of the City’s Redevelopment Authority where she facilitated the city’s partnerships with civic organizations, trade unions, nonprofit organizations and business to shape innovative policies focused on jobs, economic development and education. Returning to her neighborhood roots, McCormack led the financial and programmatic turnaround of one of Boston’s largest multi-service organizations. Frustrated by the slow progress of education reform in Boston, she founded one of the first public charter schools in Massachusetts, the Neighborhood House Charter School in Dorchester, a high performing K-8 public charter school serving 400 of Boston’s poorest families.

Ms. McCormack has served as an advisor, board member and consultant to dozens of nonprofit organizations in the fields of health, education, workforce development and public policy. She has served as an Adjunct Faculty member at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and Suffolk University. She currently serves as a Trustee of the Charles Hayden Foundation, Schrafft Charitable Trust and the International Paper Institute of Brazil.

Ms. McCormack holds an MBA with a concentration in Public and Nonprofit Management from Boston University and an undergraduate degree in Community Planning from the University of Massachusetts. She is the co-author of Profiting from Purpose: Profiles of Success and Challenge in Eight Social Purpose Businesses. She resides in Dorchester, Massachusetts with her family.