Sue Dorsey’s Next Adventure: Going Global with Sustainability and Community Impact Work

Above: Seven Gates staff members — including Sue Dorsey, second from right — doing pottery at our 2023 holiday celebration.

As 2023 comes to a close, Sue Dorsey — Gates Family Foundation’s Senior Vice President for Finance, Administration & Impact Investing since 2016 — is preparing for a new adventure: In January, she will start as Chief Operating Officer for iAlumbra, a Golden-based social enterprise founded by Christy Walton that creates and partners with innovative businesses that stimulate positive environmental, social, and economic impacts in communities worldwide.

For her new role at iAlumbra, Sue will draw on a deep well of experience — including her service as a Peace Corps volunteer in rural Costa Rica from 1990-92, working in small business development. Sue joined Gates with more than 25 years of experience in nonprofit management, international development and finance, including seven years as Chief Financial Officer for Water for People (an NGO focused on sustainable, market-based solutions to global water and sanitation challenges) and 12 years as the Executive Director of Friendship Bridge (a microfinance and education organization operating in Vietnam and Guatemala).

Throughout her nearly eight years at Gates, Sue has been responsible for all financial management, accounting, investment management, human resources, reporting, compliance, and impact investing activities. During that time, she moved the Foundation from a purely paper-based operation with finances in Excel, to all cloud-based and modern financial systems.

Sue also has been instrumental in the expansion of Gates Family Foundation’s impact investing portfolio, which has grown from one Program-Related Investment (PRI) and one mission-related investment (MRI) when she arrived, to 23 PRIs with $18.2 million committed and 27 MRIs with $47.85 million committed by the end of 2023.

“It has been a privilege to work with Sue for the last seven and a half years,” said Tom Gougeon, Gates Family Foundation President. “She has been an amazing leader and thought partner. During her tenure, she and Anna completely overhauled the operating side of the Foundation. She is also responsible for building a significant impact investing program. And throughout, she has been an extraordinarily generous and thoughtful teammate to everyone on the staff. We will all miss her, but are excited for her and know she will do great things in her new role.”

We asked a few other special people to reflect on their time and experiences working with Sue:

Santhosh Ramdoss (President & CEO, Gary Community Investments): “Sue Dorsey has been a driving force in the growth of the impact investing ecosystem in Colorado during her time at the Gates Family Foundation. Her spirit of innovation and problem-solving has been an inspiration to the community, and she has been a role model for other philanthropists with her energy, openness, and curiosity. We are excited to see her take her leadership and investment skills to new heights beyond Colorado.”

Jeff Kraft (Deputy Director Colorado Governor’s Office of Economic Development and International Trade): “I have had the good fortune to work with Sue on a number of important community projects — most impactfully, on the emergency creation of the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) liquidity facility for non-profit lenders. Sue is an innovative, impactful and collaborative partner who is able to turn great ideas into action at critical times. I appreciate the leadership and creativity she showed bringing  Gates Family Foundation and other philanthropic actors into partnership with the State of Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT), CHFA, First Bank and mission based non-profit small business lenders to create a liquidity facility allowing us to fund PPP loans to under resourced and underbanked small businesses in Colorado during some of the darkest times in the COVID 19 pandemic. This work was done with good humor and urgent phone calls over late nights and weekends, with the whole project coming together in a matter of days. It ultimately supported more than $25M in loans to more than 800 small businesses — many of which were owned by people of color, women and veterans and who would have otherwise been shut out of receiving these forgivable loans.”

Anna Schmid (Controller, Gates Family Foundation): “I will miss Sue greatly. She has done so much work to extend the Foundation’s reach by building our impact investments. But more than anything, Sue is a delight to work with. I know the whole team has felt her thoughtfulness and supportive nature. I will very much miss having her as my partner on the finance team.”

Sue holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Finance from the University of Vermont. She was an adjunct professor at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School for International Studies from 2007 to 2016. She currently serves on the Board of Humentum (formerly InsideNGO), the Mountain Area Land Trust in Evergreen, and Bridges to Prosperity.

We will miss your thought partnership, Sue — but we’re so excited to see where your next adventures take you!