Katherine Fulton

Katherine is the Chair of Acumen’s Global Advisory. In more than three decades as a change agent, Katherine Fulton has been a journalist, teacher, entrepreneur, philanthropist, convener, strategist, advisor, leader and citizen. In whatever role she finds herself, she aspires to work with leaders who are creating the future and to help people and organizations have courage in the face of uncertainty. She loves playing with complicated puzzles: seeing the possibilities and then putting the pieces together in new ways, across sectors, disciplines and cultures, always seeking to challenge existing assumptions and to engage minds, hearts and spirits along the way.

Katherine is at present a director of Monitor Deloitte Consulting and president of Monitor Institute. In that role she has advised many of this generation’s leading philanthropists and foundations as well as rising social entrepreneurs and established business leaders. Katherine is known for her expertise on the evolution of philanthropy and the emergence of impact investing as the co-author of What’s Next for Philanthropy: Acting Bigger and Adapting Better in a Networked World and Investing for Social and Environmental Impact: A Blueprint for Catalyzing an Emerging Industry. She has given dozens of major speeches about the future of philanthropy, including one at the main TED conference.

Katherine’s work draws upon her own life experiences of change, healing and transformation. A native Virginian, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Harvard, and then returned to the South, where she covered politics for a daily newspaper. Driven by a desire to innovate, she co-founded The North Carolina Independent, an award-winning investigative newspaper, which won her both a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard and a foundation prize for community service. After leaving journalism in the early 1990s, she taught at Duke University before working as a consultant and later serving as co-head of the practice at Global Business Network (GBN). At GBN, she worked with world-class futurists, mastered the scenario planning toolkit and advised leaders in more than a dozen industries as they sought to adapt more skillfully to rapid change. She has served on numerous governing boards, including the global board of Monitor and the founding board of the Global Impact Investing Network.