Investing in Philanthropy
Graduate Class taught by Randi Shade
McCombs School of Business

Randi Shade is the mother of two teen-agers, including a son with autism, which is why her primary voluntary activity these days is serving as co-chair of Greenleaf NCC (www.greenleafncc.org). Randi has served on numerous nonprofit boards and formerly was Executive Director of the Austin Entrepreneurs Foundation. Randi was also founder and CEO of CharityGift, a venture capital backed Internet company she founded in 1999 and sold to a publicly traded company in 2005. She was the first openly gay person elected to the Austin City Council, and in 2012 the Human Rights Campaign honored Randi and her wife with Austin’s Bettie Naylor Visibility Award. Earlier in her career, Randi launched AmeriCorps for Texas working for Governor Ann Richards and leading an effort that resulted in Texas being awarded $55 million in federal grants, which was more than any state in the nation. Randi started her career at Procter & Gamble and served as Director of National Development for City Year. Randi was awarded an Echoing Green-Harvard Public Management Fellowship to work for Teach for America in 1991, received a German Marshall Memorial Fellowship in 2004, and in 2005 became a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. Randi has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in the Plan II Honors Program at UT Austin where she served as student body president.