NPAG Retained by Proteus Fund to Lead Search for New President and CEO
February 12, 2026 – Executive search firm NPAG was recently selected by Proteus Fund and the Proteus Action League to lead in its hunt for a new president and CEO. The search is being led by Ellen LaPointe, Ebony Breaux-Liang, and Andres Marcuse-Gonzalez. Proteus Fund is seeking a president and CEO who will lead the organization in this context with renewed clarity of purpose, deep resolve, and bold stewardship that builds on Proteus Fund’s strong foundation and momentum, while evolving to meet the urgency, complexity, and opportunities of the moment and realizing a vision for amplified, enduring impact.
The next CEO of Proteus Fund will be an experienced, principled, values-driven, and highly resilient leader who is passionate about advancing social justice and transforming philanthropy, according to the job specification. They will guide the organization through a time of uncertainty and challenge in our world, building on the considerable legacy and momentum Proteus Fund has achieved to date.
The next Proteus Fund CEO has a distinct opportunity to amplify the organization’s role as a steadfast and bold leader among intermediaries advancing social justice at a critical juncture. The current moment calls for a leader who can thoughtfully identify, manage, and mitigate risk and sustain programmatic clarity and a clear stance amid emerging challenges, while remaining firmly anchored in Proteus Fund’s core values. The incoming leader will chart a path forward that deepens Proteus Fund’s impact and influence, strengthening its position as a model for peer institutions navigating similarly complex and turbulent terrain.
Proteus Fund partners with foundations, individual donors, activists, and other allies to work strategically towards racial, gender, queer, and disability justice and an inclusive, fully representative democracy. The Fund partners with philanthropic and community leaders to identify critical opportunities, gaps, and challenges facing movement organizations and mobilizes donor support and a range of non-grant tools to strengthen and sustain their work.
Serving Foundations and Non-Profits
Since 2002, NPAG is a national executive search and consulting firm dedicated to supporting justice movement leadership. The firm has partnered with a broad range of foundations and non-profits working in racial and gender equity, LGBTQIA+ rights, reproductive health, democracy preservation, public health, economic justice, climate, and other social justice movements. They are a women-owned and women-led firm with a diverse team of 20+ professionals, and have completed over 1,400 searches – including many hundreds at the CEO/executive director level – nationally and globally over nearly 25 years. In addition to search, NPAG provide bespoke training and capacity building, outplacement, board facilitation and development, and both team and individual leadership coaching services.
Related: 7 Key Trends Impacting Non-Profits
Ms. LaPointe, managing director, is a seasoned non-profit executive who has held C-suite and other senior leadership roles in organizations focused on LGBTQIA+/HIV health care, research and advocacy; philanthropy; technology-centered approaches to advancing well-being; law; and intersectional equity and social justice throughout her career. Her national practice at NPAG includes retained executive search in philanthropy and in legal and health-focused non-profits, board and executive level strategic advisory services, succession planning, executive coaching, and outplacement support. Most recently, Ms. LaPointe was CEO of Fenway Health, a $145 million, 600-person non-profit that advocates for and delivers innovative, equitable, accessible health care, supportive services, and transformative research and education to over 33,000 LGBTQIA+ people and people from other underserved communities annually.
Ms. Breaux-Liang comes to NPAG with over a decade of experience in education, nonprofit work, recruitment, and executive search. She began her career as a Teach for America Corps Member in the San Francisco Bay Area, and later supported students through the college application process as a college advisor and director of college counseling. Ms. Breaux-Liang got her start in executive search at Isaacson, Miller, where she focused on recruiting leaders for senior positions in higher education and the arts and culture sectors.
Mr. Marcuse-Gonzalez recently returned to NPAG after joining The Democracy Fund in 2022 as an internal recruiter. During his time with the Democracy Fund, he took part in hiring nearly a quarter of the current staff while ensuring that equity was present in all hiring processes. Prior to his tenure at NPAG from 2020-2022, Mr. Marcuse-Gonzalez spent three years working with think tanks and local non-profits in D.C. His early experiences supporting major fundraising teams led him to pursue a career in diverse executive recruitment and consulting.
Related: Navigating Uncertainty: How Non-Profit Executive Search is Evolving
Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
