Guidestar
Jacob Harold is the President & CEO of GuideStar, the largest source of data about nonprofits. Each year ~10 million users seek answers from GuideStar’s 1.3 billion pieces of data.

Harold came to GuideStar from the Hewlett Foundation, where he led grantmaking for the Philanthropy Program. Between 2006 and 2012, he oversaw $30 million in grants, which aimed to build a 21st century infrastructure for smart giving. Before that, he worked as a consultant to nonprofits and foundations at the Bridgespan Group and as a climate change strategist and campaigner with the Packard Foundation, Rainforest Action Network and Greenpeace USA.

Harold has written extensively on climate change and philanthropic strategy. His essays have been used as course materials at Stanford, Duke, Wharton, Harvard, and Oxford. He earned an AB summa cum laude from Duke University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Harold has further training from Green Corps in grassroots organizing, Bain in business strategy, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in complex systems science, and the School for International Training in Tibetan studies.

Harold was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where his parents ran small community-based nonprofit organizations.