MISSION SQUARED EXPERTISE HAS BEEN EARNED THROUGH EXPERIENCE
Mission Squared team members are seasoned leaders and colleagues who have led or contributed to success on mission-oriented teams. They each benefit from strong and diverse professional networks that they may draw upon to help Mission Squared’s partners.
AMY BLACK CUrcio
Amy was inspired to found Mission Squared after twenty years of benefiting from multiple opportunities to lead or serve on teams that had a transformative impact on some of the world’s most important challenges from the global HIV/AIDS crisis to educational inequality. Mission Squared was created to help other organizations adapt lessons learned from these and other organizations’ successes to their own missions.
Amy previously served as the leader of the global education team at Results for Development (R4D) where she focused on improving education outcomes by supporting the policymakers, practitioners and funders pursuing system-level reforms in low- and middle-income countries.
From 2008 to 2016, Amy was the vice president of growth strategy and development at Teach For All, a global network of nearly 50 national partner organizations each of which recruits and equips young talent to teach and pursue other leadership opportunities that will improve educational opportunities for marginalized youth, e.g. Teach For China, Teach For Nigeria, Teach For Belgium, etc. Her team was responsible for supporting these new organizations in their start up years and for securing the $25 million annual operating budget for the global organization.
Before helping to establish Teach For All, Amy was Executive Director of the Washington, D.C. region at Teach For America, where she expanded the corps of teachers from 90 to 300 and launched an early childhood education program that became a national model. She began her education career teaching middle school reading and writing in Baltimore City Public Schools as a Teach For America corps member.
From 2002 to 2005 Amy was Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Department of State where she oversaw international communications for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), traveling to more than 20 countries receiving PEPFAR support in two years. She also helped coordinate multiple U.S. government agencies’ contributions to the first South African PEPFAR country operational plan while based in Pretoria.
Each of these experiences have equipped and inspired Amy to find ways to scale the impact of mission-driven teams and ideas and to understand the necessary conditions for a big vision to become reality.
Amy lives in Washington, DC and holds an MS in international relations from Georgetown University and a BA in English from the University of Tennessee. She is also a member of the 2016 class of Presidential Leadership Scholars.
Dr. Aaliyah El-Amin
Aaliyah El-Amin is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education where she teaches courses on disrupting racism and racial inequality. Her research focuses on how schools can support students to work toward social and racial justice by equipping them with tools for social analysis and activism.
She has strengthened the ability of multiple schools and education organizations to better address issues of race and class in their work. These engagements have included training on how to engage students in conversations about race and racism, how to create racially inclusive schools and how to build adult racial literacy.
Aaliyah is a former elementary school teacher, school Instructional Dean and Executive Director of Teach for America in Charlotte, NC. She holds a B.A. in sociology from Davidson College, an M.A. in elementary education from Georgia State University and an Ed.M. in Education Policy and an Ed.D. in Education Policy, Leadership, and Instructional Practice from Harvard Graduate School of Education, as well as principal licensure from the University of Georgia. She is the author of several publications such as Critical Consciousness: A Key to Student Achievement.
TIMOTHY C. WARE
Timothy C. Ware supports leaders in becoming agents of change by creating a vision, building alignment and championing execution. Tim has held multiple senior level executive roles and has nearly two decades of experience in community based public service. Prior to entering the sphere of public education, Ware spent seven years overseeing the delivery of wraparound services to the neighborhood in which he lived.
Ware’s work as an educator in Memphis spans nearly a decade. In 2006, as a Teach For America corps member, he taught history at Frayser High School. In 2008, he was granted a position in the Building Excellent Schools Fellowship after which he founded and led Veritas College Preparatory Charter School. Veritas College Prep earned many distinctions under Ware’s leadership, including recognition by the Tennessee Department of Education for being in the top 5% of all schools in the state for student growth. In July 2013, Ware joined New Leaders, where he supported emerging school leaders. In 2015, Ware joined the Achievement Schools District in Memphis and oversaw the turnaround of chronically underperforming schools.
A gifted public speaker and champion for high quality education, community empowerment, and social innovation, Timothy Ware is a 2016 Presidential Leadership Scholar and a graduate of Cedarville University. He currently is an appointed Commissioner at the Memphis Cook Convention Center, serves on the Advisory Boards of Teach For America Memphis and New Leaders, Inc. - Memphis, and sits on the Governing Board of Lifeline to Success.
Betsy Enriquez
With a passion for building community wherever she goes, Betsy strives to make others feel at home and to make a positive impact on the world. To that end, she spent the first 14 years of her career as a fundraiser in the non-profit sector, helping organizations scale their programs and expand their impact through generous gifts from Foundations and Corporations. Betsy gained experience with a breadth of nonprofits, from growing organizations like City Year and Teach For All, to more well-established institutions like the Guggenheim Museum.
From 2019 to 2024, Betsy held various leadership roles at Catchafire, a social good tech company that connects nonprofits to volunteers for help on virtual skills-based projects. She managed a portfolio of 15+ accounts; conceived, developed, and led regional strategies; and drove company-wide innovation and growth by conceiving of and leading cross-team revenue opportunities.
Throughout her career, Betsy has built strong relationships with senior leaders at grantmaking institutions across the country and has found success in connecting interested donors to organizations who need their support. Betsy tackles her work with a relationships-first approach, a high level of collaboration, and a bias for action.
Betsy holds a BA from the University of Rochester where she played four years of varsity soccer and led the team as a captain her senior year. Betsy lives in Dallas, Texas with her husband and two children.
GRANT LOFTESNES
Grant Loftesnes is an Engagement Manager at Mission Squared, where he draws on experience in the nonprofit industry to develop comprehensive engagement strategies for mission-driven partners. Grant works alongside partners to build fundraising strategies, implement sustainable growth, and develop strategic plans that are both ambitious and rooted in robust operational processes. He has worked with education reform organizations, think tanks, charter school networks, and other domestic and international nonprofits.
Prior to joining Mission Squared, Grant supported operations at Results for Development, a global health nonprofit. He also spent time at Carnegie Mellon University’s Washington Semester Program, generating unique and innovative professional development and mentorship opportunities for undergraduate students.
Grant holds a Master of Public Administration with a concentration in Nonprofit Management from the University of Colorado Denver. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in International Studies (Arabic Language minor) at American University and resides in Washington, DC.
Jacqueline Pratt-Tuke
Jacquie is a 2007 TFA alum and taught in DC middle and high schools for seven years. She then worked for the Flamboyan Foundation—a DC-based nonprofit focused on developing educators’ capacity to partner with families. At Flamboyan, Jacquie designed a school-wide approach to building partnerships between educators and families and coached leadership teams in 12 secondary schools to embed and sustain effective family engagement practices. Most recently, Jacquie earned a Master’s in Educational Leadership and served on the leadership team at High Tech High Mesa, a project-based learning school in San Diego. At Mesa, Jacquie studied how students define authenticity in learning and how authentic work sparks and sustains student engagement. Jacquie is passionate about centering student voices, rigorous and authentic learning that engages students and equips them for the future, designing and facilitating adult learning, and bringing people together to focus their expertise and resources towards supporting student success.
Jacob Allen, Partner and Managing Director, Social Impact Practice, Cicero Group
Mission Squared and Cicero Group regularly partner to serve clients. These engagements are representative of Mission Squared’s history of partnering with like-minded firms to best serve client needs.
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Jacob Allen is a Senior Partner with Cicero Group, leading the Social Impact practice which partners with leading mission driven organizations to maximize their impact through strategy, performance monitoring and impact evaluation (M&E), and effective implementation.
Over the past 20 years, Jacob has worked with hundreds of mission-driven organizations around the world, including leading corporate philanthropies, international NGOs, and nonprofit providers. He has led the strategic design, measurement, and implementation of social impact programs run by former US (United States) presidents, major corporations, private foundations, and national and global nonprofits. His expertise includes helping companies implement a shared value approach to CSR, transforming the effectiveness of nonprofit networks, and using data to design, improve, and evaluate high-impact initiatives. A sample of clients includes Prudential, Bristol Myers Squibb, Synchrony Bank, BDT Capital, Goldman Sachs, Textron Systems, Lumina Foundation, Strada Education Network, the George W. Bush Institute, the Clinton Foundation, Wounded Warrior Project, United Way, Junior Achievement, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Nature Conservancy, the National Academy Foundation, and many more.
He is a thought leader on maximizing impact, with major articles and reports that include Quantifying the Value of Impact Investing, The Giving State, and Stop Starving Scale: Unlocking the Potential of Global NGOs. Jacob serves on the international board of Mary’s Meals, which provides a daily school meal to two million children living in desperate poverty worldwide.
Callie Kennel, Engagement Manager, Cicero Group
Mission Squared and Cicero Group regularly partner to serve clients. These engagements are representative of Mission Squared’s history of partnering with like-minded firms to best serve client needs.
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Callie Kennel is an Engagement Manager with Cicero®. Callie has extensive Social Impact experience spanning many sectors including; Healthcare, Non-Profit, Higher Education, and Public and Private entities. Callie’s expertise includes non-profit impact analytics, maximizing impact through effective strategy, performance monitoring and impact evaluation (M&E), and effective implementation.
During her time at Cicero, her work has focused on non-profit change management, strategic prioritization and planning, as well as developing measurement and evaluation frameworks. She has also partnered with private and corporate foundations to better position them to maximize their impact on underserved populations and philanthropy through robust impact and program assessments.
Prior to joining Cicero group Callie worked with Oregon State University (OSU) strategizing alumni engagement around three pillars of impact; student success, advocacy, and diversity, equity and inclusion, creating the framework for the University’s first-ever engagement to giving pipeline. Prior to OSU, she worked with United Way as a partner guiding foundations, public charities, and social enterprises toward lasting, scalable change through strategy development, program design, and monitoring and evaluation.