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A student at Leawood Middle School in Leawood, Kan.
When you graduated from high school, what did you think you wanted to be as an adult?
To work in sports and music entertainment or hospitality management.
Was there an event in the last 20 years that had a great impact on your aspirations and/or career path?
My first professional exposure to the not-for-profit sector was a summer internship with the Legacy Fund, the Hamilton County affiliate of Central Indiana Community Foundation. Through this internship, I gained an understanding that not-for-profits require the same level of critical thinking, business strategy and leadership as for-profit entities, and that I could apply my business skills to an organization that serves populations in need in our community.
Have you been mentored by (or had any significant interactions with) previous Forty Under 40 honorees?
I was nominated by David Harris, my direct supervisor at The Mind Trust. He’s taught me almost everything I know about education reform and taught me the importance of never being complacent.
Where/what do you want to be 20 years from now?
I believe that our community will have a very strong public education system in 20 years, and hopefully I can look back and say that I was a part of inspiring that change.
Vice president of strategic growth initiatives, The Mind Trust
Age: 32
Sarah Moore spearheads The Mind Trust’s “Grow What Works” campaign, an $18 million fundraising initiative to invest in the most promising education reform organizations in Indianapolis.
As vice president of strategic growth initiatives for The Mind Trust, a not-for-profit education reform organization started in 2006, Moore cultivates and solicits major gifts and handles other development work. Eighty percent of the money raised for Grow What Works is earmarked to scale the success of the education groups that have had the most impact in Indianapolis thus far: Teach for America, The New Teacher Project, College Summit and Stand for Children, and two that have been developed through Mind Trust’s Educational Entrepreneur Fellowship program, Teach Plus and Summer Advantage.
The other 20 percent will support The Mind Trust’s Education Entrepreneur Fellowships and Charter School Incubator initiatives.
After graduating from DePauw University in Greencastle with a bachelor’s degree in communications, Moore went to work for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. After four years, she took a dip in the for-profit world at ExactTarget, but discovered she missed the not-for-profit sector.
“I really missed feeling like my work was going to a cause greater than myself,” she said.
She thought about her own life, and “other than my parents, my education is really what provided me the opportunities that I have.” She went to suburban public school through junior high, and Park Tudor High School. So she joined The Mind Trust in January 2011.
Moore continues to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, partly to honor her grandmother, who died of leukemia. In 2010, Moore was named the organization’s Woman of the Year after raising $84,000 in 10 weeks. She has also raised funds through the Team in Training program, completing a half marathon, a 100-mile bike ride and a triathlon.
She also is involved with the Legacy Fund, the community foundation for Hamilton County.
In October, she ran the Chicago Marathon, her first. She lives with her yellow Lab, Brinkley, and is engaged to marry Sam Hawkins in April.•
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