Our Team

Mina Kumar

Project Leader

Mina is an expert project manager with over twenty years of experience working with social sector organizations on strategy, business planning, stakeholder engagement and facilitation, performance evaluation, and organizational learning. Mina has a passion for working with teams to build a robust culture of learning and innovation. As a Project Leader, she has furthered Blue Garnet’s commitment to shift the way community organizations, researchers, and funders uncover knowledge together. For a foundation client, she developed a participatory evaluation of its grantees receiving COVID-response funds. For a charter school management organization, she has coached its leadership team and board on a multifaceted strategy and organizational change project, including performance management and board development.

As a consultant prior to Blue Garnet, Mina worked with capacity building organizations, funders, and direct providers in youth services, K-12 education, higher education, workforce and economic development, domestic violence, affordable housing, volunteerism, and the arts. She has worked with statewide and national funders on program strategy, including the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and the Houston Endowment.

In addition to her consulting, Mina has management experience, most recently as Chief Program Officer at Families Empowered, a statewide parent service non-profit reaching over 100,000 parents across Texas. The organization’s purpose is to help resource-constrained parents to understand their K-12 school options and access schools that work, for them. She is currently an instructor in Organizational Effectiveness at the Rice University Leadership Institute for Nonprofit Executives and at Startups for All, a purpose-driven incubator, on the Board of the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies, and a co-founder of the Homer Seed Library. Mina lives in Austin, Texas and enjoys playing music with her family.

(Psst! Mina was Blue Garnet’s first full-time employee, then “boomeranged” back to work with us several years later. Read more in this Alumna Spotlight!)

 

Top 5 strengths: Learner, Achiever, Arranger, Positivity, Includer