Background
Evan Coughenour is a partner and leads Bellwether’s organizational sustainability work, including mergers, strategic partnerships, organizational pivots and restructurings, and divestitures and wind-downs.
Since joining Bellwether in 2014, Evan’s clients have included national education nonprofits, state education agencies, Catholic and charter school networks, early childhood intermediaries, city-based funders, state and national advocacy organizations, and postsecondary access and success organizations. He has supported more than 30 strategic planning efforts for networks across all sectors and geographies, along with a dozen projects addressing school portfolio footprints, network structures, mergers, and engagements focused on strategic partnerships.
Prior to Bellwether, Evan worked elsewhere in the education sector, as a Teach For America corps member in the District of Columbia, and through an internship with A Better Chicago. He also has extensive business experience, including as a consultant and special assistant to the CEO at ASI Government, a consulting firm that specializes in federal acquisitions, program management, strategy and organizational performance, emerging technologies, data analysis, and customer experience. During his latter years at ASI, Evan served as a project lead on the firm’s own merger efforts, working with the organization’s investment banking partners to source and evaluate potential partners, supporting negotiations and diligence, and ultimately executing two successful acquisitions (and subsequent integrations) of merger efforts.
Evan holds an MBA with honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a master’s degree in elementary education from American University, and a bachelor’s degree with distinction in psychology from Yale University. Based in San Francisco, Evan is an outdoor enthusiast, avid (but injured) runner, committed singer, proud husband of a KIPP school leader, and beguiled father of two.
Why I Do This Work
Teddy Roosevelt said, “Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” Strengthening our education system is our generation’s most challenging and worthwhile work. During my time as a tutor and teacher, I was struck by disparities in educational opportunity, the wildly different outcomes of students growing up only a few miles apart, and the degree to which these opportunities and outcomes were determined by geography and family resources — amplified by policy, prejudice, and parochialism. The tight correlation of children’s educational achievement with parental social and economic status belies the American Dream. Our country can and must do better and I am thrilled to contribute in a small way toward rebuilding our most critical institutions — in partnership with my committed colleagues at Bellwether and those at the organizations we serve.
Focus Areas
Artificial Intelligence
District and Charter Systems and Governance
Nontraditional and Out-of-School Learning
Organizational Sustainability
Contact Information
evan.coughenour@bellwether.org
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