Valerie Threlfall is the managing director of Listen4Good (L4G), a capacity building initiative of Fund for Shared Insight, that provides social sector organizations with tools and strategies for soliciting and incorporating client feedback into their ongoing decision-making. The overall objective of L4G is to shift power and center organizations on the perspectives, wisdom, and needs of those most impacted but least heard in the sector.

Starting in 2016, Valerie led L4G’s initial design and provided 1:1 coaching to the inaugural portfolio of 46 organizations. Listen4Good has grown since then, serving over 625 nonprofits to date. Valerie currently leads Listen4Good’s strategy, fundraising and new program development—and oversees a coaching, product, program, and partner services team that is 20-person strong.

Valerie began her work with L4G while she was Principal of Ekouté, her consulting firm based in Oakland, CA that specialized in integrating client feedback into organizational strategy and performance measurement. Ekouté published multiple key articles for the field of feedback and listening including: Perceptual Feedback: What’s It All About? in 2015 and Bridging the Gap: A Review of Foundation Listening Practices in 2019.

A recognized leader in the feedback space, Valerie also served as founding director of the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s YouthTruth project, one of the first national efforts to gather comparative feedback from students about what they believe is working (and not working) in their schools. Under her tenure, YouthTruth matured from an idea on a piece of paper to an organization serving hundreds of schools across 23 districts. YouthTruth has since grown to survey almost 2 million youth today.  

Valerie holds a joint MBA and MPP from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.