The sectors. The institutions. The depth of experience behind the work.
Amanda has advised and partnered with some of the world’s most consequential leaders — bishops and monks, Fortune 100 CEOs, corporate and foundation executives, and global philanthropists; diplomatic chiefs, ambassadors, and heads of state; professional musicians and world-class performers.
Across every sector and every context, the work has been the same: innovative programming, meaningful partnerships, and systems built to last — with the funding architecture to make them real.
Amanda’s work in education spans every level of the system — from early childhood literacy and classroom design to professional certification, curriculum development, and cross-sector policy. She has operated as a practitioner, educator, institutional leader, and systems-level advisor, giving her a rare ability to work across the full arc of educational change rather than from a single point within it.
At Hands Across the Sea, she designed and launched the region’s first Universal Emergent Literacy model, now the recognized leading framework for early childhood literacy across the Eastern Caribbean. She served as a systems-level advisor and technical expert alongside USAID, UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Bank, and the Global Partnership for Education, and established formal partnerships with six National Ministries of Education and the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States. Her expertise was cited in a landmark USAID publication on evidence-based book use strategies across lower- and middle-income countries.
Her K–12 work spans curriculum design, policy development, systems building, and partnership — from the highest levels of intergovernmental collaboration to ground-level direct service across hundreds of schools, communities, and faith centers in six nations. She has also supported the development of evidence-based professional certification programming at the institutional level, directed the advancement of a national financial literacy curriculum and media series built for scale, and as a classically trained musician and performing artist, has taught and mentored students in studio and community settings across four continents.
Her education work is fundamentally about systems: how institutions learn, how communities develop, how policy shapes access, and how meaningful partnerships drive change that outlasts any single program.
At the Garrison Institute, Amanda served as a senior leader during a period of significant institutional expansion in the planetary health space. The Institute’s Pathways to Planetary Health program convened scientists, economists, ethicists, impact investors, and global thought leaders to articulate a regenerative ethical vision for the Anthropocene era. Amanda helped shape that programming directly — identifying and recruiting leading global voices, building the Institute’s comprehensive planetary health library, and bringing the field’s most cutting-edge science and economics into dialogue with practitioners and donors who could advance it.
Her work spanned the full external affairs infrastructure of the Institute: development, communications, partnerships, and media. She built relationships with foundations, corporations, and individual donors whose philanthropic capital advanced work at the intersection of climate, contemplative practice, organizational resilience, and systems-level social change. She curated private symposia and convenings that positioned the Institute as a recognized global leader in mindfulness, sustainability, and human flourishing.
Amanda also co-created and co-owns U.S. Patent No. 11,186,946 for sustainable 3D performance knitwear using near-zero-waste WHOLEGARMENT™ technology — a direct application of sustainability innovation at the product and manufacturing level. She has also produced strategic program assessments for major national institutions on the use of advanced technologies to build integrative systems that support collections, research access, academic infrastructure, and earned-income models. She understands this space not as an observer but as a builder within it.
Amanda’s work in holistic health and integrative wellness spans institutional leadership, practitioner consulting, and business development. She has worked directly with some of the world’s most respected minds in mindfulness, integrative medicine, somatic practice, contemplative science, and evidence-based resilience — earning their trust not as a service provider but as a strategic partner who understood their work and could advance it.
Her consulting work in this space includes helping to design and build businesses in the wellness and human services sectors — developing brands, building community programming, establishing cooperative systems, generating awareness and press, creating and overseeing marketing and editorial strategy, and structuring the partnership architecture that allows organizations to grow on their own terms. That work reflects a broader approach she brings to practitioners and wellness organizations: honoring and elevating what makes each one distinct, while building the systems, networks, and positioning that allow them to reach further.
At the Garrison Institute, she served as senior external affairs leader during a period of significant expansion — partnering with foundations and donors whose capital advanced work at the intersection of contemplative practice, resilience science, and organizational health globally. Her contributions went beyond the operational: she consistently brought ideas, networks, and opportunities that opened new dialogues and deepened field relationships. She understands this sector from the inside — its language, its leaders, its funding landscape, and the organizational challenges unique to mission-driven institutions navigating growth in a space where identity and integrity are everything. More than one practitioner and partner, after spending time with Amanda, has asked whether she has a formal background in integrative health. She does not — but the fluency is real, and it shows.
Amanda’s relationship with the arts is not advisory. A classically trained violinist, she holds a degree in music and has performed at some of the highest levels across solo, chamber, orchestral, and ensemble settings — on grand stages and for heads of state, alongside some of the world’s most celebrated musicians and artists. She was recognized as a thought leader within that community before she ever entered the consulting world. This is a community she belongs to — and it shows in the quality of the work.
As Creative Managing Editor of the Long Island Opera Guild, she directed brand strategy, editorial voice, and institutional positioning. At Oneness, she represented the organization alongside some of the most recognized names and institutions in American music and culture, partnering on national programming with artists, civic leaders, and organizations at the highest levels of the field. At the Garrison Institute, she produced a landmark institutional publication and curated convenings featuring Grammy-nominated composers, internationally recognized performers, and living legends across musical traditions.
She has served on arts boards at the executive level — not in a ceremonial capacity, but as an active force for growth. In those roles, she has built new community partnerships, expanded audience access, brought in resources, and advanced organizational awareness in ways that opened doors the institution had not previously walked through. She has led education initiatives in music and performance, and has worked with professional musicians, cultural diplomats, and performing artists across four continents. For arts organizations, cultural foundations, and creative institutions navigating growth, governance, or fundraising, she is a rare advisor who speaks the language from the inside.
This is where Amanda's work is most foundational. Before the strategy can be executed, the fundraising architecture built, or the partnerships forged, the organization has to be ready to hold it. That readiness is what she builds.
At Hands Across the Sea, she led a five-year institutional transformation of a founder-led nonprofit — rebuilding governance, implementing GAAP-compliant financial systems, professionalizing the board, strengthening operations, and designing scalable program models that earned formal recognition from six National Ministries of Education and the OECS Commission. Net assets grew 167%. What she inherited and what she left behind were fundamentally different organizations.
At the Garrison Institute, she served as a Senior Leadership Team member during a period of significant institutional expansion — overseeing all external affairs and functioning as a close strategic partner to the Executive Director, Founders, and Board. At Oneness, she was recruited to professionalize a renowned founder-led nonprofit and was subsequently appointed Executive Director by unanimous board vote.
Her consulting work extends this experience directly to clients: organizational design and team structure, board governance and accountability frameworks, executive transition advisory, succession planning, and the institutional positioning that allows organizations to grow into what they are trying to become. She has built and restructured teams, led re-organizations, and developed staff from operators into leaders — people who were executing tasks when she arrived and carrying organizational vision when she left. She has done this work at every scale — from scrappy early-stage nonprofits to internationally operating NGOs — and she understands what it actually takes to build something that lasts.
Her executive foundation in this work is her Master of Science in Fundraising and Nonprofit Management from Columbia University, with a focus on business and nonprofit administration — a credential that grounds her practice in both the strategic and operational realities of organizational leadership.
Fundraising is not a service Amanda offers alongside her other work. It is a core discipline that runs through every engagement, every sector, and every stage of organizational development she has navigated. She holds a Master of Science in Fundraising Management from Columbia University — one of the most rigorous programs of its kind — giving her both the academic grounding and the practical frameworks that separate architectural fundraising from transactional fundraising. She has raised capital for literacy programs in the Eastern Caribbean, contemplative resilience training for humanitarian workers, planetary health convenings, and arts and cultural institutions — at every level, for organizations at every stage of growth.
Her fundraising expertise is architectural: she builds the systems, pipelines, and strategies that produce revenue over time, not just for a single campaign. She designs donor cultivation frameworks, diversifies funding portfolios, builds corporate and foundation partnership models, and creates the internal accountability structures that make growth sustainable. She understands the narrative and communications infrastructure that fundraising requires — and builds that too. Across two decades of executive leadership and board service, she has also built the membership systems, community engagement pipelines, and governance structures that make organizations attractive to donors in the first place.
At Hands Across the Sea, she raised $2.5M+, grew major and corporate giving 20–100% per donor, improved donor retention to 53%, and grew net assets 167%. At the Garrison Institute, she drove $1M+ in philanthropic revenue and oversaw two galas generating $300K+ net. At Columbia University, she designed a capacity-building grant that secured a $600K mega-foundation gift. These figures represent a fraction of the fundraising work across her career. They are offered not as a ceiling, but as a sample.
Amanda works across every dimension of the fundraising enterprise:
Every engagement begins with an honest conversation about what is actually at stake. If Avant Grand is the right fit, you will know it.
Begin the Conversation© 2026 Avant Grand Consulting. All rights reserved.
Designed with intention.