Cassie Scarano

Cassie joins Koya Leadership Partners as Managing Director following the acquisition of Commongood Careers, where she was Founder and CEO. A seasoned nonprofit leader and search expert, Cassie Scarano brings a wealth of experience partnering with Boards of Directors and senior leaders to ensure they recruit and retain the best talent for their organizations. At Commongood Careers, Cassie led all aspects of organizational strategy and operations while personally managing over 100 searches and overseeing more than 1,000 searches for innovative mission-driven organizations across the country. Cassie’s clients at Commongood Careers included New Profit, Tipping Point Community, Center for Effective Philanthropy, iMentor, and many other high-impact nonprofit organizations.

In addition to her search work, Cassie has served as a thought leader for the sector, creating and conducting training sessions on effective nonprofit recruiting and hiring, integrating an equity lens into the recruiting and hiring process, and conducting an effective job search in the social sector. In 2015, she partnered with the Robin Hood Foundation to create LeaderLink, an innovative program to recruit and select senior-level leaders from the private sector to participate in a training program to prepare them to transition into leadership roles within the nonprofit sector.

Cassie also oversaw a partnership with the Kresge Foundation, intended to strengthen leadership teams through effective searches while also building organizational capacity to integrate an equity lens into their recruiting and hiring work. In partnership with the Level Playing Field Institute, Cassie and her team conducted a study of the motivations of professionals working in the nonprofit sector and wrote The Voice of Nonprofit Talent, which focused on recommendations for organizations to move beyond ideals and theory to support the diversity of the sector and build inclusive organizations.

Prior to Commongood Careers, Cassie held a variety of senior leadership roles in nonprofit organizations, which gives her a valuable perspective when partnering with nonprofit leaders on talent-related issues. As the Dean of Admissions at The Steppingstone Foundation, Cassie led the team recruiting and selecting students and families for a rigorous academic enrichment and college access program. Early in her career, she served as Director of Summerbridge Cambridge (now Breakthrough Greater Boston) where she helped grow the program by 40%.

Cassie is an advisor to Equity in the Center, a former Board member of Breakthrough Cambridge, where she served as co-chair of the governance committee and member of the expansion committee, and an alum of LeadBoston.