BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Paula (Lead '23) has spent 20+ years proving that organizations can grow fast, hold their values, and keep their people whole, all at the same time. She is a strategic, visionary leader who helps organizations at inflection points transform, scale, and reimagine what’s possible, without sacrificing their people or their principles to get there. The cultures she builds are ones where staff stay, funders invest, and communities’ trust.

Paula currently serves as the CEO at Aspire Afterschool Learning, where she doubled the organization’s reach and fundraising in under three years, retained 90% of staff through the Great Resignation, and led the region through a federal funding crisis with transparency, hope, and zero compromise on values. At Sandy Hook Promise, she scaled programs from concept to 12 million youth trained across all 50 states, and helped pass landmark bipartisan federal legislation along the way.

She’s also building The Followership Revolution — a thought leadership platform rooted in a simple but radical idea: the true measure of a leader isn’t their title, their authority, or even their strategy. It’s whether people genuinely choose to follow them. Not because they have to. Because they believe.