When he turned 50, David Offensend (MBA 1977) decided to make a change. He’d had a successful career in finance but had always dreamed of working in the nonprofit sector. In 2003, he recalls, “I made this leap of faith, that if I could find a management position in the nonprofit, I could really contribute a lot.” Since then, he’s proved that thesis correct—several times over—in positions at the New York Public Library, at America Achieves, and currently as president and CEO of Education Development Center (EDC), a global nonprofit based in Waltham, Mass., that develops programs to improve education, promote health, and expand economic opportunity for the citizens of 80 countries.

Founded in 1958, EDC designs, implements, and evaluates programs that range from early childhood education to suicide prevention to distance learning. Offensend is focused on scaling up those projects and increasing the organization’s visibility. “We may have discovered a better way to teach young kids mathematics or to teach non-English speakers how to read English in third grade, or how to better inhibit suicidal patients from taking their own lives,” he says. “But if we don’t scale it up, it just sits on the shelf, and that doesn’t do anybody any good.”

(Published October 2019)

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