About Us
Dedicated Educator
Kate Capossela brings 20 years of industry experience in marketing, recruiting, training, and general management across consumer products, education, financial services, startups, and the social change sector. Her current courses at University of La Verne in leadership and career development as well as business management provide learners with the opportunity to acquire and practice strategic skills—salary negotiation, interviewing, presentation skills, networking, and more —with real-world data and hands on projects, as well as the winning secrets of an executive recruiter. Content from this course has already been replicated to other departments to provide the same impact and results to non-business majors.
Accomplished Public Speaker
A classically-trained singer and engaging public speaker, Kate was a professional performer with The Walt Disney Company, and has performed in venues including the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, and the United States Senate. She brings this perspective to leading training workshops, keynote addresses, conference presentations, or trainings for executives, university students, or young leaders of Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles. Kate holds degrees from Stanford and Cornell, where she was also a Park Leadership Fellow and Managing Editor of Cornell Business Journal.
Recruiting, training, and inspiring leaders
An accomplished advocate for leadership development, Kate Capossela is passionate about recruiting, motivating, and training leaders and teams. Kate started her career in talent development, training, and marketing as a university fundraiser at Stanford University and Georgetown University before raising millions of dollars in corporate and foundation partnerships for The Asia Foundation, the largest international development firm on the West Coast. She created custom philanthropic partnerships in 18 countries in Asia with first-time donors such as Disney, Pfizer, and Chevron, as well as Wal-Mart’s first international philanthropic partnership. She also launched a first-of-its-kind major donor program supporting girls’ education, including in Afghanistan, which was replicated across the foundation’s other programs.
At national social enterprise Playworks, Kate served on the senior leadership team as Regional Executive Officer, where she led ten regional leadership teams, including hiring, training, and managing Executive Directors and Fundraising Directors. She created and delivered customized management and career development training to staff and Board across 24 offices. Next, Kate was VP and Business Lead for storytelling platform Great Nonprofits, working alongside Stanford Social Innovation Review founder Perla Ni. She led the multi-lingual launch of software startup Community Connect Labs, which enables cities and states across the country to use mobile messaging to amplify data from vulnerable populations.
Kate is a long-time national leader in the Young Nonprofit Professionals Network (YNPN), which advocates for a more just and diverse social change sector. At YNPN, she has served in multiple leadership roles since 2002 including National Recruitment Chair and National Board Development Chair. Her time in the private sector includes working at Johnson & Johnson as a marketing director for a new seven-brand marketing platform, a lead financial forecaster, and an MBA recruitment lead. She also served as Chief Strategist and philanthropic services lead for private wealth managers MK Ellison. For the last several years, she has worked as an executive recruiter and organizational development trainer focused on social entrepreneurs. Recent clients include Robert Redford Center, The Nature Conservancy, Technovation, Techbridge Girls, Justice Outside, URU The Right to Be, and the United Nations Foundation.