Jehan Velji

Jehan Velji is Director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Effective Philanthropy Group, which seeks to strengthen the capacity of the foundation’s programs, initiatives, and grantees — and philanthropy, in general — to achieve their goals and benefit the common good. As director, Jehan leads a team that both makes grants to strengthen nonprofits and the philanthropic sector, and provides internal guidance across Hewlett’s programs on supporting grantee capacity and developing, implementing, and evaluating grant strategies.

Jehan is a philanthropy expert with three decades of experience in strategy consulting and organizational capacity-building. She joined Hewlett from Blue Meridian, where she oversaw a range of work in support of economic mobility as managing director of portfolio strategy & management. Before that, she served as the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation’s senior portfolio director, where she drove the planning and analysis of EMCF’s core grantmaking strategies and managed several long-term grantee relationships. She went to EMCF after almost a decade at The Bridgespan Group, where, as a partner, she worked on strategy with a range of nonprofit and foundation clients. Prior to Bridgespan, she engaged with both business and nonprofit clients as a strategy consultant with Mercer Management Consulting. Earlier in her career, she worked at Catholic Relief Services, where she was responsible for leading teams evaluating the effectiveness of the group’s work in 15 nations.

In addition to receiving an undergraduate degree from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, Jehan holds a Master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and an MBA from Harvard Business School.