About Sarah

Sarah Cotton Nelson, flying trapeze-enthusiast and founder of High Flying Strategy, is a social impact leader with 20+ years’ experience guiding organizations to maximize their impact.

She is known for helping others create vision and implementation road maps for social change; aligning leadership intent with action; and connecting disparate individuals and groups to each other so that they can team up to do even more powerful work together.

She spent 14 years at Communities Foundation of Texas as Chief Philanthropy Officer enhancing CFT’s policies and procedures to ensure more racially, geographically and culturally inclusive and equitable grantmaking alongside community-responsive nonprofit capacity building.

Prior to this, she teamed with other researchers to conduct public policy research studies for the RAND Corporation; managed a youth center for teens in downtown Los Angeles; and supported nonprofits in the post-war period in El Salvador with USAID.

Sarah is a 2022-2024 Independent Sector Bridging Fellow, 2017 Presidential Leadership Scholar, 2016 GEO Change Leaders in Philanthropy Fellow, 2003 American Marshall Memorial Fellow, and 1997 graduate fellow in public policy and economics at Pontifícia Universidad Católica in Chile. She received her undergraduate degrees in international development and Spanish from UC Berkeley.