Ann Cohen serves on the Board for Avodah.
Ann Cohen is an executive business consultant who founded Ann Cohen & Associates in 1999 combining her business and nonprofit experience to enable organizations to identify and achieve their strategic goals. Working in partnership with her clients, she brings thought leadership and comprehensive planning for effective strategy and governance. Her consulting spans board development and redesign, management effectiveness, strategic planning, and comprehensive program design. She believes in ‘making it work’ and thus delivers the leadership training, coaching, conflict resolution, and learning required to listen, lead through change, implement action, and continue the learning.
Ann served as one of 14 BoardSource Senior Governance Consultants and is a frequent contributor to BoardSource publications and knowledge forums. When BoardSource ended their consulting practice, together with her colleagues they founded the Nonprofit Board Governance Consultants Group with a commitment to providing expert board consulting and training to the nonprofit sector.
Her clients include a range of nonprofit entities including private foundations, religious
organizations, and others as well as corporations and governments. She works in partnership with chairs, boards, and key executives, seeking to create a leadership culture rising to higher levels of governance, organizational excellence, and strategic focus. She is also creator and director of PRESIDE; a nationwide program designed for nonprofit board leaders and CEOs to support building a sustainable culture of effective governance and intentional leadership through the lens of values and core principles.
Ann’s early career, which provides the roots of her consulting practice, includes over 25 years as a Vice President at Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and as a trial attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice. At EDS she established several business units in the financial markets, law enforcement and aeronautics, developing and growing them to over $3.5 billion in revenue. As an attorney she handled federal cases across the country and in the U.S. Supreme Court.
She lives what she does; having served on non-profit boards in the areas of social justice, arts and education, religion, and community building. Among the honors for which she is most proud are her service on the board of the re-established United Way of the National Capitol Area; her selection as a “Federal 100” winner, for top information technology executives; her appointment to the United States-Israel Science and Technology Commission; her service on the board of HIAS, a global organization committed to a world where refugees find welcome, safety and opportunity; and her service on the board of Avodah a national organization whose programs build Jewish leaders to support and create meaningful change.
Ann graduated cum laude from Clark University with a Bachelor of Arts degree and earned her juris doctor degree from Antioch School of Law.