Lisa Margosian brings over thirty years of leadership with for-profits and non-profits, and experience with non-profit boards. Utilizing highly developed stakeholder management skills, she has rebuilt underperforming businesses, led businesses through integration post-mergers, scaled non-profits, and transformed organizations after mission shifts.
Lisa most recently served as the interim CEO of Ascend Charter Schools, a 15-school network serving 6200 students, bridging between the founder and the permanent leader during the global pandemic. Over eighteen months, she worked integrally with the leadership and the organization’s two boards to:
- Reshape the culture, focusing on equity and employee voice,
- Restructure Ascend to reduce the operating budget by 20% while strengthening reserves and reallocating resources,
- Implement the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism (DEIA) mission,
- Integrate a strategic goals structure,
- Systematize communications,
- Align, empower, and facilitate hiring of the executive team, and
- Onboard her successor.
Lisa previously served as the Chief Customer Office of Girls Scouts through the redefinition of the national headquarters to be customer centric and responsive to the needs of local offices. She was responsible for the mission and program delivery of the $1 billion-dollar network of 112 independent 501c3s, while generating 47% of national headquarters revenues. Key accomplishments included: integration and local chapter adoption of a Salesforce platform to drive membership; growing girl and adult membership after a five-year decline; capacity building of local chapters through leadership training; and embedding data collection and sharing across chapters.
As KIPP’s Chief Program Officer and Director of Network Growth, she facilitated the quality scaling of the charter school network, now 250 schools. Her responsibilities included growing the network with quality; working integrally with boards and executive directors of regions on capacity building and ensuring leadership capability to facilitate scaling and growth; securing growth funding, and overseeing programming for local board chairs, executive directors, and principals.
Prior to her fifteen years of non-profit executive leadership, Lisa worked in financial services with Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase, scaling functions across the globe and rebuilding underperforming businesses. Lisa led through the integration of four bank mergers, which developed her transition leadership skills and ability to create new culture, vision, and goals through intentional change management.
Lisa has also led two non-profits undergoing transitional leadership changes from a governance perspective. She has served as a trustee and elder of the Brick Church, New York City, and a board member of the Brick Church school. In her local community in Putnam County, she has twice served as president of the board and held program and treasurer roles.
Lisa has a M.B.A. from Columbia University and a B.S. from Marquette University. She resides in New York City with her husband. She runs, plays tennis, hikes, and enjoys cooking and entertaining.
LinkedIn: Lisa Margosian