Co-Founder, Open Impact
Alexa Cortes Culwell is the cofounder of Open Impact and a longtime philanthropy advisor, speaker, and facilitator. For the past 25 years she has built and managed foundations and philanthropic initiatives for successful entrepreneurs, including serving as the founding CEO of the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation.
She recently completed a four-year appointment as a visiting practitioner at Stanford University’s Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society. Over the span of her career, Cortes Culwell has created initiatives for more than 175 human service and education reform nonprofits. As a foundation CEO guiding philanthropic investments, she has also incubated and scaled several social change start-ups in the areas of education and youth development. Her work has been cited in Harvard Business Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations.
Cortes Culwell is a partner of Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2), a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley, and a former trustee of the Center for Effective Philanthropy. For the past 20 years, she has also played an active role developing New Door Ventures, a nationally recognized nonprofit in San Francisco pioneering a model of social enterprise that creates economic opportunity for marginalized youth through job training and internships.