Len Bartel joined the CFLeads team as Senior Director of Strategy and Learning (now VP, Learning and Impact [Capacity-Building]) in January 2018. In this role, he develops approaches and frameworks that advance community foundation learning, assesses and refines current learning opportunities, and promotes a culture of reflection, learning, and continuous improvement. Len believes that community foundations are critical to reimagining the commonweal and advancing equity. He is also committed to the notion that, as in politics, all change is local and community foundations play a vital leadership role in building and supporting communities of solution.
Len comes to CFLeads with over 20 years of experience in the social sector – 13 years spent working within community-based organizations whose services ranged from community and economic development to rural health care, and the last 9 years working in philanthropy. Len served nearly 8 years as a program officer at the Maine Health Access Foundation where he designed their healthy communities strategy, lead evaluation of their place-based work, managed the foundation’s first program-related investment, and served a multi-funder effort to support nonprofit organizational assessment, development, and sustainability.
In recognition of his philanthropic leadership, Len has served as an outside reviewer for HUD’s Sustainable Community Regional Planning Grant Program; he was also selected to two national fellowship programs – The Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities PLACES (Professionals Learning About Community, Equity, and Smart Growth) fellowship, and the Terrance Keenan Institute for Emerging Leaders in Health Philanthropy, sponsored by Grantmakers in Health. Len is a graduate of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, where he now lives with his wife and two sons. He’s an avid photographer and enjoys hiking the many gorges in Upstate NY with his family.