Helen is the Project Manager for Grant Philanthropic Advisors. She's been with the firm since 2020. Helen coordinates all client needs and team assignments to ensure client expectations are met. She keeps our GPA team in line and on their toes! Helen is motivated by our work as she is passionate about our community's needs and values the nonprofit sector's ability to think outside the box and create solutions that empower people.

Helen earned a bachelor's degree in 2007 from the College of Charleston. Her career has included a variety of roles and industries. She was a data analyst with Benefitfocus, a publicly traded company, for 2 years. Prior to her time at Benefitfocus, Helen honed her project coordination skills at Bishop Gadsden, a continuing care retirement community in Charleston, serving in the role of Resident Services Coordinator. She currently splits her time between GPA and Aging Life Care Charleston.

A native South Carolinian, Helen hails from Pawleys Island. In her free time, you can find Helen at the beach with a good book or enjoying time boating and sharks' teeth hunting with her husband and daughter.

As data consultant to Grant Philanthropic Advisors, Elisa works with clients to assess their own philanthropic impact and trends, analyzing their historic giving data and identifying patterns in their grant-making. All of which informs nuanced discussions around strategy and goal setting for future giving. This is where science meets art in serving our clients’ desire for effective philanthropy.

Elisa earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies and a master’s degree in Statistics before beginning her career as a data scientist at IBM, building machine learning models in the retail, aviation, and weather industries. After five years at IBM, she decided to pursue her own venture, Explore Philanthropy, a platform and dashboard for philanthropists to find, compare, and analyze organizations that best fulfill their giving mission. She believes that change-makers can increase their giving impact when they have the best information available to them.

Elisa lives in Charleston, where she serves on the board of the Charleston Library Society and volunteers with and gives to several local non-profit organizations. A self-proclaimed data-nerd, if you can’t find her behind a Python script, she’s probably chasing after her two (soon to be four!) young children.

Jessica serves as a Senior Advisor on the GPA team. She works directly with clients to help them crystallize what is most important to them and create a philanthropic strategic plan that honors their "why". Her years of experience as a funder helps clients to understand the hallmarks of an effective nonprofit while also introducing clients to new funding opportunities.

Jessica moved to Charleston in 2010 and invested in the community from the start. Most recently, serving as the Director of Boeing Global Engagement, she led external relations across 11 states overseeing $100M of charitable investments over her ten-year career with Boeing in South Carolina.

Jessica’s passion for supporting the community began as a hospital volunteer at the Western Maryland Health System where she grew up in Cumberland. She experienced advocacy work as an intern at the State House in Annapolis and then graduated from the University of Maryland in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in Communications. Upon earning her master’s degree from Georgetown University in 2009, Jessica moved to Charleston to be closer to family.

Jessica currently serves on the boards of Camp Happy Days, Social Venture Partners Charleston, MUSC Children’s Hospital and Tri-County Cradle to Career Collaborative. On the weekends, Jessica is typically at the beach with her husband Grier and their two boys Matthew and Bo.