Managing Partner; Chicago, IL

Provides senior leadership from over 20 years in impact-focused executive roles in public sector consulting, school systems, and government agencies.

Carrie is the co-founder and Managing Partner of Afton Partners. Since Afton’s beginnings in 2011, Carrie has led with the vision that everyone deserves to lead a fulfilled life, regardless of race or social status. Her impact experience spans the public, private, and non-profit sectors in the areas of child care, early education, K-12 education, higher education, and workforce development. Carrie has led dozens of advisory, facilitation, and research engagements on behalf of state agencies, school districts, charter schools, education non-profits, and philanthropic foundations. She brings a strong blend of relational skills, strategic thinking, and quantitative analytics to a team focused on solving some of our society’s toughest challenges.

Carrie is considered a national expert in education finance and governance systems. Her work has created equitable funding policies, solved financial sustainability concerns, built financial leadership capacity, uplifted community voice in decision- and solution-making, and illuminated effective resource allocation strategies. 

Carrie’s consulting leadership roles have included:

• Co-led teams of advisors and constituents for multiple school districts to reimagine school funding policies, leading to greater equity in resource allocation and greater influence of community voice.
• Facilitated a nationally acclaimed state-wide advisory group effort that produced school expenditure reporting guidelines, visualization, and training aligned with Every Student Succeeds Act and state goals for Fiscal Equity & Return on Investment. Resulted in more equitable school district resource planning and greater access to school spending level data for communities.
• Convened and co-facilitated a statewide early childhood funding commission that laid the foundation for a simpler, better, fairer early care and education system.
• Convened and co-facilitated a workforce equity & access commission, using human-centered design to create recommendations for funding, governance, and service solutions.
• Led initiatives for over 70 charter school operators that resulted in stronger board governance, sounder organizational decisions, and strengthened financial health through advisory services, facilitation of CFO communities of practice, training sessions, and executive coaching.
• Contributed to strategies and operations that can endure through serving on the steering and advisory committees of several justice-oriented education non-profits.

Before establishing Afton, Carrie spent ten years as a corporate and public sector restructuring consultant. She earned her BBA in Finance with a second major in French and is a CFA charter holder. Carrie serves on several non-profit boards and advisory groups in a desire for justice, joy, and peace in our society. She is a sports know-it-all, a proud member of the LGBTQ+ community, and mom to her school-age daughter, Emily.