PROVOCATOR FOR GOOD
Dedicated to social impact.
Nate Wong specializes in creating lasting social change by both mobilizing talent to defy prevailing orthodoxies, while also helping shape the very systems that impede a prosperous and equitable world for all.
He has experience in the private, social, and public sectors, working in over 10 different countries, helping clients maximize their social impact.
Nate serves as a Partner at The Bridgespan Group, a social impact consultancy helping donors, non-profits, and impact investors catalyze transformative systems change. He is also an Adjunct Professor and Lecturer at Georgetown University where he pioneered a open-sourced course called Building a Social Impact Consciousness. Nate is also a Fellow of the Civil Society Fellowship, a partnership with the Aspen Institute and ADL.
Prior he served as the Chief Strategy and Social Innovation Officer of the Beeck Center, an experiential hub to incubate emergent ideas in the social impact space, housed at Georgetown University. He oversaw the Center’s differentiated approach to social innovation and scale, while also leading its impact tracking and growth initiatives. Before Beeck, Nate served as founding Deputy Director at the Centre for Public Impact (CPI), a not-for-profit foundation funded by The Boston Consulting Group. CPI is dedicated to improving the positive impact of governments and partners around the world. Nate helped launch and direct CPI's program work in North America focused on city innovation, economic mobility, and government legitimacy. Previously, he helped launch Deloitte Consulting's Social Impact strategy consulting practice, where he helped marketplace leaders utilize their core competencies to maximize their positive social impact.
Nate has worked on issues around economic development/ mobility and inclusive entrepreneurship including stints at Obama Foundation, Acumen, Endeavor, and TechnoServe. Nate has written for Fortune, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Business Insider, and other publications on the latest trends in the social innovation space.
Today’s strategy paving tomorrow's success.
Nate's work on over 50 social impact projects has shaped the ecosystem and created lasting social change.
A prosperous world where all people have a voice, access, and autonomy to achieve.
Portfolio Highlights
ENABLING CITIES TO EMBRACE THE POWER OF PUBLIC PROTOTYPES TO INNOVATE
2018 United States Mayors Challenge
At the Centre for Public Impact, Nate helped to manage the 2018 U.S. Mayors Challenge, sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies. The Challenge is a nationwide competition that encourages city leaders to uncover bold, inventive ideas that confront the toughest problems cities face.
The 2018 Mayors Challenge includes a new 6-month testing phase where a select 35 Champion Cities will conduct public prototypes of their ideas. Topics addressed by Champion Cities include climate, health, and jobs as the most popular. Through the Challenge, U. S. city leaders look for unique ways to tackle the opioid crisis, create renewable energy options, prevent arrest youth from re-entering the criminal justice system, and minimizing childhood trauma from gun violence.
Read More about Mayors Challenge's work helping cities' learn how to conduct public prototyping →
Launching a movement to empower boys and young men of color in the United States
My Brother's Keeper Alliance
While at Deloitte, Nate helped design the operating model leading to the 2015 launch of the My Brother’s Keeper Alliance nonprofit, President Obama’s post-administration legacy organization focused on expanding opportunities for boys and young men of color (BYMOC) from cradle to career. The potential increase in annual GDP as a result of closing the achievement gap for students of color is estimated at $525 billion. Over 250 communities have responded to the President's call to increase access to opportunities for BYMOC.
Nate later helped with the programmatic strategy and project management process with the integration of My Brother's Keeper Alliance with the newly formed Obama Foundation in 2017. Read Non Profit Quarterly's coverage of the integration →
Read More about the next chapter of MBKA in partnership with the Obama Foundation →
Scaling a sustainable business model for eye care in the Developing World
Luxottica's One Sight
Nate helped develop a steady state model for the Gambian eye care clinic of OneSight, the large global eyewear company Luxottica's independent non-profit. Through this effort, he helped assess its sustainability and customer lifetime value using creative human-centered design interviewing techniques that ultimately would lead to OneSight's expansion to other countries.
Through OneSight's partnership with Deloitte, Nate sized the global eye care epidemic and determined that 1.1 billion people worldwide suffer from vision loss and lack access to vision care. For all of them, vision can be restored with a simple pair of glasses. OneSight has impacted over 9 million people in 46 countries and counting. Read USA Today and BusinessWire's write-up on findings →
Innovating how we respond to disasters and humanitarian relief
World Humanitarian Summit
In preparation for the United Nations' World Humanitarian Summit, Nate led an effort to innovate how we respond to disasters and humanitarian relief. He recommended models for innovation exchanges, which eventually led to the creation of the Global Alliance for Humanitarian Innovation that was created in late 2015.
Nate also helped benchmark R&D investment in the humanitarian sector compared to other sectors. As a result, this research found that more R&D investment in the humanitarian sector should yield results—as long as it is accompanied by investment in critical success factors. Read the R&D Investment Report →
Powering a new wave of social innovation and finance in companies
World Business Council for Sustainable Development
Through its partnership with Deloitte, Nate collaborated on research to encourage more companies to actively pursue social innovation and finance as a means to achieve greater long-term sustainability, financial growth, and social impact. Nate's anchor research around corporate archetypes has helped frame discussions on corporate venturing models and the role of CFOs to integrate social impact more fully into the core business.
Read the Corporate Archetypes Report → | Read the License to Innovate Report →
Partnering to build the social enterprise and inclusive impact investing ecosystem
Halcyon Incubator
Nate has worked with the DC-based social enterprise residential incubator since Halcyon's inception in 2014.
Nate pioneered Deloitte's inaugural partnership with Halcyon that has provided strategic advisory services to over 60 early stage ventures/ social entrepreneurs utilizing over 60 high-performing consultants and over 200 employee volunteers.
Nate serves both as a mentor and Selections Committee advisor. He also has collaborated with Halcyon leadership on key thought leadership to catalyze the broader social enterprise ecosystem. More information on the SocEntCity Ecosystem thought leadership →
Read More about Halycon's work supporting early-stage social entrepreneurs →
Spurring The Next Generation of Organizational Social Change Agents
Social Intrapreneurship
Nate is an active participant in the social intrapreneur movement, collaborating with key players to catalyze more social change agents inside organizations. Nate draws from his circuitous career at Deloitte Consulting for over a decade that included taking a sabbatical to pursue an international development focus, catalyzing Deloitte's emerging market efforts, and more recently helping to launch Deloitte's Social Impact practice.
Unlike social entrepreneurs, intrapreneur's key asset is their ability to navigate the organizational structure to innovate, build coalition, and mobilize resources for quick tangible wins. Nate has collaborated with key organizations like Points of Light and Moving Worlds Institute to share his insights.
See Nate's past speaking events on the topic →
