A combination the nonprofit AI consulting world has never seen before.
Three Equal Co-Founders
Each one a sector leader in their own right
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Serial social entrepreneur. Bestselling author. Historic founder. Cheryl Contee has led the frontier of tech, equity, and impact for two decades — and she’s just getting started.
Cheryl is a pioneering technology entrepreneur and digital transformation expert. She is renowned as a trailblazing startup founder and a trusted advisor on innovation & impact. She inspires audiences globally as a leading voice on inclusive entrepreneurship and social enterprise.
She has co-authored a bestselling new book called “AI for Nonprofits: Putting Artificial Intelligence to Work for Your Cause” with Darian Rodriguez Heyman featuring insights from more than 50 leading AI experts. AI for Nonprofits has become the definitive guide for nonprofit leaders navigating this moment.
As a founder, Cheryl’s company Attentive.ly, acquired by Blackbaud. Before that, she co-founded Fission Strategy, one of the earliest digital consultancies serving the world’s leading nonprofits and foundations. And before most people in the sector had a framework for inclusive entrepreneurship, Cheryl was already building it — as co-founder of #YesWeCode (now DreamCorps Tech), Jack and Jill Politics, and Do Big Things.
She is also a Senior Advisor to PosterChild.AI and co-founder of Change Agent AI, two mission-driven ventures pushing the frontier of AI for social good.
At BrightWorks AI, she leads innovation strategy, thought leadership, and client engagements for nonprofit and philanthropic organizations ready to move from AI anxiety to AI advantage — with clarity, courage, and conviction.
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Hilary Cherner is a strategist, problem solver, and self-described philanthropy geek with more than two decades of experience helping mission-driven organizations navigate growth, complexity, and change. Her work sits at the intersection of strategy, operations, and change management, with a focus on helping organizations translate ambitious ideas into practical action.
Most recently, Hilary served as Sand Technology’s inaugural Executive Director for Social Impact, where she led a global team delivering AI solutions to nonprofit and philanthropic organizations. Her work focused on helping social sector leaders understand and apply emerging technologies in ways that advance mission, strengthen impact, and reflect organizational values.
Prior to Sand, Hilary spent 16 years at Arabella Advisors, joining as the firm’s fifth employee and helping guide its growth from startup to one of the leading philanthropic advisory and operational support organizations in the country. Over the course of her tenure, she held a variety of leadership roles, ultimately serving as Arabella’s first Chief Strategy and Impact Officer. She led firm-wide strategy and impact initiatives and worked closely with clients, nonprofit leaders, and the leadership teams of Arabella’s nonprofit partners on organizational strategy, impact measurement, growth, and implementation.
Throughout her career, Hilary has advised foundations, donors, nonprofits, and social impact organizations across a wide range of issue areas, including democracy, global development, education, conservation, women’s equality, and economic opportunity. She brings deep experience helping leaders navigate uncertainty, build alignment, and lead organizations through periods of transformation.
At BrightWorks AI, Hilary helps foundations and mission-driven organizations develop thoughtful, values-aligned approaches to AI adoption. Her work focuses on strategy, governance, organizational readiness, and change management, helping leaders bring their people along as they navigate one of the most significant technological shifts of our time.
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Most people started talking about responsible AI in 2022. Ashley Boyd has been doing the work since 2018.
As Senior Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Mozilla Foundation — one of the most trusted voices in open internet and digital rights globally — Ashley led the development of Mozilla’s trustworthy AI initiative years before “AI ethics” became a conference circuit buzzword.
She oversaw advocacy strategy for an organization with over 6 million global supporters, and she created Privacy Not Included, the landmark consumer privacy guide that helped millions of people understand exactly what technology was doing to them — and demand better.
Before Mozilla, Ashley was founding staff at MomsRising, helping to build the organization from the ground up to more than one million supporters — one of the most successful digital organizing efforts of its generation.
Ashley brings to BrightWorks AI something the sector desperately needs: a practitioner who understands both the movement side of social change and the technology systems that either enable or undermine it. She didn’t just watch the AI ethics conversation develop. She helped write the playbook.
At BrightWorks AI, she leads governance, advocacy strategy, and equity-centered AI frameworks for nonprofits and foundations ready to get this right.
