Executive Director: Shannon Murtagh
Shannon Murtagh’s work in public education began as a teacher at IslandWood in Washington state, where she also got her start in advocacy as a political organizer. For nearly a decade, she led research and policy initiatives at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, focusing on the intersection of parent empowerment, school choice, school autonomy, and educational equity. Then, as an independent consultant, Shannon played a key role in enhancing the strategic vision and direction of various organizations, with a continued emphasis on working with K-12 school districts.
She began her journey with Finding Common Purpose (FCP) in 2023, initially conducting research on place-based initiatives and community dashboards. In 2025, she took on the role of Executive Director, leading the charge to advance FCP’s vision of providing strategic philanthropic investments to place-based initiatives.
Shannon holds an MPA from the University of Washington and a BS from Yale University. Based in Lexington, Massachusetts she’s the parent of three public school students, volunteers constantly (from sitting on boards to coaching sports), is an avid baker, and bikes everywhere.
Lead Donor: Andrew Wolk
Founder and lead donor Andrew Wolk became a serial social entrepreneur over twenty years ago to pursue his life’s work: ensuring effective use of resources to help more individuals and families achieve lifelong success. Prior to founding Finding Common Purpose he founded three sustainable independent nonprofits:
- Root Cause empowers communities to build, improve, and sustain social change initiatives that enable all people to thrive;
- Social Innovation Forum builds organizational capacity and introduces community-based nonprofits to funders;
- Interise shifts the focus of technical assistance from start-up small businesses to existing community-based businesses
Andrew has led consulting projects with foundations, nonprofit organizations, public school districts, corporations, and government agencies across the United States. He was also part of the team that stood up the Office of Social Innovation during the Obama Administration.
Andrew has been recognized for his pioneering efforts as an educator, having designed and taught one of the world’s first courses on social entrepreneurship at Boston University. He has also lectured at MIT (7 years), Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, Boston College, and the Heller School at Brandeis University.
Over the years, his work has been written about in the New York Times and Boston Globe and he has appeared on WBUR, Boston’s NPR news station. Andrew earned an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Nonprofit Management from Boston University and a BA from Lehigh University.
