Tiziana Dearing

Tiziana Dearing is Executive Director of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. In that capacity, Ms. Dearing manages the operations and fundraising for this research institution, as well as writing, speaking and doing research on nonprofit organizations and civil society. Her recent research areas of interest include comparative advantage in humanitarian relief; public obligation; and the functioning and governance of the Catholic Church as a nonprofit organization. She also has written on just war theory. The Hauser Center itself is a multi-disciplinary research center emphasizing critical thinking about nonprofit organizations, philanthropy, and civil society. The center’s members engage in research, teaching and practice, and strive to bridge the world of ideas with implementation on the ground. The Hauser Center’s work spans both the United States and the globe.

For a decade before joining the Hauser Center, Ms. Dearing consulted to senior managers in nonprofits and corporations. In 1997, she started her own consultancy, working with senior executive teams of nonprofits. Her consulting specialized in strategy development and implementation, executive decision making and coaching, and large and small group facilitation. Her clients represented organizations local and international, academic and non-profit, and with budgets ranging from one to several hundred million dollars. Prior to launching her business, Ms. Dearing worked with a management consulting firm specializing in knowledge management, process development and Balanced Scorecard services to Fortune 500 companies. While there, she wrote one of the early knowledge management methodologies. She came to consulting after working on development, marketing and loan distribution for Women’s Self-Employment Project, a nonprofit micro-lending organization in Chicago, Illinois. WSEP was the first organization in the United States to import the lending model developed by Nobel Prize Winner Muhammad Yunus.

Ms. Dearing has a Masters in Public Policy from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, with concentrations in International Security Policy and Negotiation and Conflict Resolution. She had a merit-based scholarship as a Kennedy School Fellow. She has a BA in English with High Distinction from the University of Michigan, where she won the prestigious Hopwood Writing Award. In addition to her work, Ms. Dearing remains active in her community, including serving on the Boards of Directors of the Harvard Cooperative Society, The Prometheus Institute, and the Financial Stewardship Initiative. She sat on the review board of the Full Financial Disclosure process for the Archdiocese of Boston in 2006, and served for several years as Vice President of the Bedford Affordable Housing Trust. In her spare time, she teaches aerobics.

Ms. Dearing has published and provided commentary for media outlets such as WBUR/NPR radio, The Boston Globe¸ MSNBC, BBC Radio and the Battle Creek Enquirer, and has a semi-regular column with The Philanthropy News Digest. She also serves on the editorial board of the scholarly journal, The Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. She speaks regularly at public events and conferences.

Ms. Dearing lives in Bedford, Massachusetts with her husband, one daughter and one son.

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