Casey Johnson

Casey Johnson is a consultant on the Embolden team.

Casey is a social innovation and philanthropy leader with over two decades of experience driving transformative systems change at the intersection of venture philanthropy, nonprofit leadership, and community impact. She has dedicated her career to building, scaling, and strengthening organizations that expand economic mobility and create lasting pathways of opportunity for communities across the United States.

Most recently, Casey served as Vice President of National Portfolio & Learning at GreenLight Fund, a national venture philanthropy organization where she spent over a decade helping to expand its footprint from one site to 14 communities. During her tenure, she helped direct more than $35M in investments to 55 high-impact organizations, shaping strategies that have reached millions of people and accelerated economic mobility for over 755,000 individuals in 2024 alone. As a founding Executive Director of GreenLight Bay Area, she built the site from the ground up, piloting and refining the model to ensure meaningful local impact while influencing the national expansion strategy.

Throughout her career, Casey has been recognized as a trusted advisor, thought partner, and mentor. She has coached dozens of nonprofit and philanthropic leaders, developed and led national teams, and built cross-sector partnerships with social entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, government officials, and funders to unlock collective impact. Her expertise spans portfolio management, strategic growth, due diligence and grantmaking, organizational strategy, learning and evaluation, fundraising, and capacity building.

Beyond her professional work, Casey serves on several nonprofit boards, including Kristi Yamaguchi’s Always Dream Foundation (where she currently serves as Board President), the Language and Learning Foundation, and the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement. She is also an advisor to Astia, an investment firm supporting women-led companies, and was a 2019–2020 Change Leaders in Philanthropy Fellow with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.

Casey holds Master’s degrees in Teaching (University of San Francisco) and English (Brooklyn College), and a Bachelor’s degree in English from Christopher Newport University. Her work and perspective have been featured in BizWomen, as well as on the Scaling Impact and Lead & Live Well podcasts.

At the heart of Casey’s work is a commitment to equity, collaboration, and investing in people — building the conditions for leaders and communities to not only envision transformative change but to realize it.