Gretchen Villegas
Chief Executive Officer and Founder
NEXUS Strategy and Growth Partners LLC
The Visionary Behind NEXUS
Gretchen has held senior and executive leadership positions for over 25 years, managing budgets of over 320M+ USD. She lived and worked in Latin America and Africa, for 15 years, and most recently in the United States as a Chief Executive Officer and Senior Vice President leading strategy, new business, revenue generation, and product and program scaling. Gretchen has worked for non-profits with annual revenue of 120M+ and corporations of 20B+. Gretchen successfully designed and negotiated a 60M USD multiyear revenue strategy that brought a three-fold increase for a global non-profit in just 24 months by leveraging various partnerships with corporations to access funding from the US Government.
Gretchen is a visionary leader who uses a North Star approach to guide teams toward a global impact goal. She uses data-driven, and evidence-based assumptions to forecast returns on investment for new business creation. Gretchen successfully guided the start-up team of 10X Impact Ventures on the foundational strategy attributes clarifying the social enterprise’s purpose and goals which allowed them to pitch to investors. She is a skilled facilitator and presenter, managing more than 200 participants in a strategy session at a time, which she has done in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the United States with multicultural teams in attendance.
Gretchen has a Master’s degree in Intercultural Management from the School for International Training, speaks fluent Spanish, is certified in the 9 Elements of Organizational Identity (9EOI) and is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer.
Gretchen's Impact
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500K+ reduction in overhead costs after executing a full organizational restructure
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35M USD win from the US Government as a result of partnership negotiation between a corporation and a non-profit
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10M families impact goal was facilitated through organization-wide strategy sessions and convenings
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450 staff were trained in Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning processes and policies through facilitated on-site retreats globally
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320M+ budget managed across 30+ countries and 1,000+ staff
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60M USD multiyear revenue strategy that brought a three-fold increase for a global non-profit in 24 months
Skills & Expertise
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Strategy facilitation
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Leadership convening
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Partnership Development
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New Business Development
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Expert Scale Strategist
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Sustainable Program Design
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Activity-based budget and data management
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Proforma/Budget Analysis
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Organizational/Management restructuring
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Leverage identification and negotiations
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Integrate and Coordinate Business Processes
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Data Monitoring System Development
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Program Management System Development
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Business Development Process Design
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US Government Contracts and Compliance
Frank Valdivia
Managing Partner
NEXUS Strategy and Growth Partners LLC
My Story
I am a Managing Partner at NEXUS Strategy and Growth Partners and a global development leader with a passion for building the social, environmental, and economic blocks to allow prosperity for vulnerable populations. I began my career working in school feeding programs in Asia feeding close to 1.2M children per day, where I learned about the challenges faced by school children and their families living in poverty. That experience ignited my passion for working in Global Development and building data and evidence-based processes and systems that link strategy to revenue and the impact of the organization. I rely on my passion and my top-tier global development and business education from Harvard, where I have taken graduate-level classes, and from the University of Minnesota, where I got my MBA, to contribute to the prosperity of vulnerable populations now and in the future.
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I am an inclusive leader and strong builder who enjoys working with cross-functional teams to build and improve processes and systems to connect strategy to data, evidence, and impact. My focus is on the analytics needed to collect, monitor, report, learn, and achieve the goals of the organization.
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My expertise is working with finance, programs, marketing, and leadership to project the impact of the organization. I build scenarios and their return on investments, social return on investments, and internal rate of returns to build the impact system that reports on efficiencies and goals achieved. I believe that data and analytics help the organization achieve and augment its impact. I am committed to constructing the right blocks and transforming the organization to be data and evidence-driven.
Frank's Impact
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Built data and evidence systems using digital tools integrated with corporate systems
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Built Impact and MEL functions receiving primarily USG funding
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Worked with vulnerable populations
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Connected with direct beneficiaries in 30+ countries in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe
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Connected Finance, Programs and MEL to strategy and Impact of organizations
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Set long-term goals and targets for international NGOs
Skills & Expertise
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Five and Ten-Year Goal Projection and Strategy
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Data and Evidence Driven
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Integrating Financials with Programs and Impact
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Analytical and Quantitative Integrations
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Information System Thinking
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System and Database Oriented
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Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning
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International Field Experience
