Lynn Taliento

Change Agent, Connector, Entrepreneur, Foodie, Parent, Philanthropist, Startup, World traveler

Lynn is the Chief Program Officer of the newly created Obama Foundation. She is working with President and Mrs. Obama to build an enterprise that will create a culture of active citizenship around the world. For the past 15 years, Lynn has been a Partner with McKinsey & Company, where she founded the firm's first practice area dedicated to helping philanthropists and nonprofits have more impact. She worked with high net worth philanthropists and corporations to create or reinvent their foundations, and with leading nonprofits on strategic planning and advocacy. Some of her publicly shareable clients include Bono/ONE, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and the Walton Family Foundation. Lynn is also big on prizes, having led McKinsey's seminal research ("And the Winner Is...") on how to design prizes that work. Lynn is a passionate founding board member of Malala Yousafzai's organization, the Malala Fund, which advocates for girls' secondary education around the world. She is also board chair of water.org, a nonprofit founded by Gary White and Matt Damon that has pioneered the "WaterCredit" approach to making water and sanitation solutions affordable for all. Lynn has a B.A. from Yale University and a Master’s degree in public policy from Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. She is fluent in Spanish after spending 4 years in McKinsey’s Mexico City Office. Her husband, Michael Warren, is a great guy, and her kids Amelia (13) and Noah (10) are still really fun to be around. She did recently succumb to their relentless campaign to get a dog, and she will admit that Moose is pretty cool.

democracy + active citizenship

Let's rebuild our civic infrastructure.

advocacy, civic engagement, corporate citizenship, foundation design, girls education, philanthropic strategy, philanthropy, prize philanthropy, women in development

cursing in Spanish