Lisa Nwankwo

Co-Founder, Principal

Lisa is an impact producer, strategist, writer, and architect who has shaped film and movement campaigns that blend storytelling with structural change, raised $40 million+ for nonprofits, coached visionaries through systems change, and ghostwritten powerful impact missives for celebrities and legislators.

With lived experience at the nexus of Blackness, queerness, and womanhood and a special interest in the power of community connection, her work lives at the intersection of story, soul, and strategy — where culture is shaped and futures are funded.

She blends vision and precision, the personal and the big picture, rage and joy, magic and metrics. She sees the story under the story — and pulls it out like thread, weaving it into something strong enough to hold a movement.  She’s also the host of Often Wrong, a podcast about being bold enough to rethink everything — especially yourself. She helps people connect dots, shift perspectives, and tap back into their own power and, if you have a minute, she’d love to talk to you about the WNBA.

Too many “impact” campaigns are just PR in a costume — all talk, no transformation.

Lisa Nwankwo loves pretty things but she doesn’t chase optics. She builds systems, stories, and movements that shift power and seed futures. To her, communities are the plot AND the audience.

RECEIPTS

Lisa helped secure $2M from MacKenzie Scott’s Yield Giving Fund with the top-scored grant of the year. She scripted and supervised the star-studded GLSEN Respect Awards, launched BRIDGE, an in-school yoga + SEL program that inspired the creation of a dedicated SEL department at the School District of Philadelphia, developed a Shirley Chisholm Day at the Library of Congress with the Congressional Black Caucus, and co-founded Carrot Impact with Claire Cornetta to change how culture work gets done.

As Campaign Lead on SHIRLEY (starring Regina King), she helped secure funding for the digitization of the largest Shirley Chisholm archive in the world with the Shirley Chisholm Project. She also led impact work for impact campaigns for RADICAL and Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, the latter of which is now in Long Beach school curriculum and the winner of a Shorty Award. At Carrot Impact, she crafts campaigns that feel like community and deliver like clockwork.

WHAT SHE BELIEVES

Liberation is not a metaphor and this all could be a lot cooler and freer.

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We can build something better than what we’ve inherited — if we start by telling the truth. Together.

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Impact without intimacy is just branding.

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