Leslie Leggett

Leslie Leggett is a builder – of community, systems and ideas.

Leslie began her career as a fundraiser for a children’s charity in Scotland, cutting her teeth delivering a 1M GDP capital campaign. She then joined a nascent leadership development initiative launching within the Business School of Edinburgh Napier University. As a founding team member, she built student & client-facing programs as well as the back-end systems needed to get the initiative off the ground.

Embracing her sense of adventure, Leslie left Scotland for New York City in 2010, where she joined the founding team of Teach For America’s Social Initiative + Entrepreneurship Initiative. There, she built an ecosystem for social entrepreneurs to thrive – from forging pro bono services partnerships to designing programs to launching the Social Innovation Award that funded early-stage ventures. It was also there that she saw the need to build bridges from the people with the lived experience + ideas to the people with access + resources.

With that mission, she spent a year consulting with Columbia University’s Center for Public Research & Leadership with education partners, including the State of Lousianna’s Department of Education and the Newark Trust for Education. In 2016, Leslie joined the social impact membership community NationSwell to build its community engagement strategy. Over four years, she helped establish a community of more than 900 cross-sector leaders who are united by a shared sense of purpose and action.

Leslie serves on the advisory board of Blue Star Families and as an advisor for Broadway For All. She is a Kentucky native, living in NYC.