elaine kuttner

For over 25 years Elaine Kuttner, Founder and Principal of CCA, has consulted with the leadership of colleges and universities and their related research organizations, health related not for profit organizations, foundations and professional societies, public health and human services organizations and the arts. Her work is primarily focused on strategic planning, governance assessment and design, and one-on-one support for individuals in leadership positions. Elaine completed both her undergraduate studies and graduate work in Ann Arbor, at the University of Michigan. Early in her professional career she became interested in designing comprehensive, participatory approaches to planning aimed at strengthening institutions and organizations. That ultimately led to the founding of Cambridge Concord Associates.

Working closely with the leadership of her client organizations, including board members, administrators and senior staffs, faculty members, and others, she helps them shape essential questions, address challenges, and plan for the future. She has a strong background in governance assessment and helps her clients rethink aspects of their own governance systems in order to more effectively carry out their missions. Elaine has significant experience working within complex systems and with multiple institutions as they plan together. She presents on topics related to both planning and governance. Elaine also has a strong leadership consulting practice, providing personal support and counsel to not-for-profit and higher education leaders.

RALPH FUCCILLO

Ralph works with leaders across a broad spectrum of purpose-driven organizations and associations. He has created and directed organizational planning, as well as implemented strategic plans at the Board and Executive levels within Philanthropic, Public Health, Education enterprises, and for Public/Private partnerships. 

As the former chief executive with several foundations, Ralph has a record of responsible stewardship and a history of earned trust through his unique capacity to appreciate individual, organizational, and societal needs within a results-oriented lens.  His Board role with many nonprofit organizations continues to provide Ralph with a deep appreciation for the requirements of governance, strategic planning, policy development, the regulatory environment, and the core practices of effective resources allocation. His facilitation and planning with groups of all sizes has produced lasting results across a wide range of stakeholders.

Most recently, Ralph completed 10 years as President of the DentaQuest Foundation. He continues to guide the transformation of philanthropy and innovation through the integration of longstanding enterprise functions and components for greater impact and Mission fulfillment. He is a member of the Santa Fe Group, the Northeast Regional Health Equity Council, and the Editorial Board of Preventing Chronic Disease, an online journal of the CDC. He is the current Vice Chair of the Road Scholar (Elderhostel) Board of Directors and Co-Chair of the US National Oral Health Alliance.   He is a recent past Director of the Texas Health Institute.

Ralph is a frequent speaker and invited subject matter expert on prevention and disease management, social impact, inter-disciplinary collaborations, and health equity.  He has been recognized by numerous organizations for his commitment to community service and the advancement of various health issues and social causes.

Associates & Consulting Partners

lillie RIS

Drawing on a decade of experience and graduate-level training in program evaluation, Lillie specializes in working with organizations to measure outcomes and assess their impact. Lillie brings an evaluation lens to planning activities, working with large, complex organizations to build the measurement of results and systematic learning into strategic planning processes. Through this process, she supports clients in creating plans that are structured in a manner that enables the assessment of impact over time.

Working in partnership with both implementers and funders, Lillie draws on internally- and externally-generated information to analyze complex problems and the ways that organizations address them. Through this process, she maps the ways project resources contribute to meaningful changes on the ground, enabling strategic project planning and targeted, useful inquiry into effectiveness and impact. Lillie has conducted evaluations for a range of interventions, ranging from large-scale United Nations development programming to short-term specialized media campaigns.  

A member of the American Evaluation Association and several virtual communities of practice, Lillie holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, where she focused on Non-Profit Management and Human Security, and a Bachelor of Arts in History from Duke University. Lillie was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in 2006. 

PAUL J. KUTTNER

Paul Kuttner has been a consulting partner with CCA for 15 years. He has developed strategic plans for a wide array of educational, research, and community-focused institutions including Oberlin College, Community Catalyst, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research, the Society for Research in Child Development, the National Association for Mental Illness, and Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts.

Paul began his career as a community-based educator in Chicago. There he co-founded the nonprofit Communities Creating Change, which engages young people in the civic life of their neighborhoods through the arts. After earning his doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Paul moved into the hybrid world of campus-community partnerships. Today, Paul is Associate Director of University Neighborhood Partners at the University of Utah. In this role, Paul builds partnerships among families, students, educators, researchers, and community organizations to advance equity and justice in education.

Paul is also a researcher, focused on the relationships between educational institutions (K-12) and communities that have faced marginalization in the school system. Specific topics include culturally sustaining civic engagement, youth and community organizing, family-school-community partnerships, and engaged scholarship. Paul is co-editor of the book Disrupting the School-To-Prison Pipeline (HER) and co-author of the widely-used report, Partners in Education: A Dual Capacity Building Framework for Family-Scho0l Partnerships (SEDL). His research has appeared in a range of academic and popular venues. At the University of Utah, Paul teaches courses on family-school partnerships, community organizing, and community-based research.

Andrew B. Evans

Andy has over 40 years of finance and accounting, financial planning, and senior administrative management experience in the non-profit sector.  For most of his career he has served higher education in a variety of senior leadership positions, as Associate Dean for Management, Finance, and Development at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University for eleven years, as Chief Financial Officer at Oberlin College for ten years, and as Chief Financial Officer at Wellesley College for nine and one-half years before retiring to start a new career chapter in consulting, including executive search. Most recently he served as a Partner at Neumann Executive Search Partners, which merged with Koya Leadership Partners in 2017. He retired from Koya as managing director in June 2019 and remains a senior adviser to the firm.

Over the past six years, Andy has provided consulting services and/or led executive searches at Barnard College, NYU Abu Dhabi, Hamilton College, Skidmore College, Sweet Briar College, Northeastern University, Oberlin College, Pine Manor College, Trinity College, Dartmouth College, Pomona College, and Swarthmore College. Presently he is serving as a consultant on several projects to the Coalition for College. Earlier in his career, Andy was a U.S. Foreign Service officer for the Agency for International Development. In that role, he served overseas in Afghanistan and Indonesia in a variety of financial management positions. He also held the role of Controller of the USAID/Asia bureau in Washington, D.C. Andy started his career in public accounting.

Andy has served on a number of boards supporting higher education and was a commissioner of CIHE/NEASC, the regional accrediting association for institutions of higher education in New England.  While serving as CFO at Wellesley College he was a member of the board and later chair of the Boston Consortium. He also served as a member representative on the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE).  Representing Oberlin College, he was a member of the Five Colleges of Ohio Operating Committee from 1995-2004.  He is currently a trustee of Pine Manor College and has been a member of the Cleveland Committee on Foreign Relations; the Cleveland Council on World Affairs; the Board of Advisers, Shansi Agricultural University, Taigu, China; and a member of the Board of Directors, Boston Center for International Visitors, Boston, MA.  While at Tufts University, Andy won a Fulbright Fellow award in the U.S. /U.K. Academic Administrator Program. 

Andy is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, and holds an M.B.A. in Information Systems from George Washington University.

BETH LADOW

Beth LaDow has written and consulted for an array of clients including nonprofit organizations, institutions of higher education, and consulting firms.  For the past ten years, she has worked across Harvard University for presidents and deans, including on major speeches for audiences in Beijing, Mumbai, Dublin, South Korea and South Africa, and on strategic presentations, plans and initiatives with the Development Office, the Offices of the President and Provost and the International Strategy Working Group, including the Common Spaces Committee report with the Director of University Planning and the Financial Aid Initiative presented to the Board of Overseers.  Other groups she has worked with include Arthur D. Little, The Massachusetts Historical Society, Winchester A Better Chance and Teachers As Scholars.  A published historian, Beth previously has been a magazine editor and taught history at Brandeis University and writing at Harvard. Her radio commentaries aired on WBUR in Boston.  She holds a Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization from Brandeis, an M.A. in History from Harvard and a B.A. From Colorado College.