Jason Gaulden has spent his professional career working at the intersection of the business and nonprofit sectors. He joined Oak Rose Group as a partner after serving as founder and principal at Gaulden Group LLC, a consulting firm specializing in strategy, communications, and fundraising, with an emphasis on education organizations. He draws upon 25 years of professional experience in varying roles: executive leadership, philanthropy, communications, grassroots advocacy, research and writing, fund development, and nonprofit board development.

 

In 2022, Jason was named an Education Fellow at Common Sense Institute. From 2015 to 2020, he worked with America Succeeds, a national network of nonprofit, nonpartisan business groups focused on improving the nation’s education system. He led the organization’s Age of Agility Project, which examines the rapidly changing nature of the education-to-workforce pipeline, and co-authored the seminal report The Age of Agility: Education Pathways for the Future of Work. The initiative empowers business leaders, educators, and policymakers to better prepare students for the new workforce and economy. 

 

As a teenager and young adult, Jason had an unusually diverse and intensive set of professional experiences, being elected to the NAACP national board of directors at the age of 18, becoming co-founder a private high school at that same age, becoming a grassroots advocate and executive director of a prominent neighborhood association at age 19, and becoming youth director at the local Urban League at age 21. 

 

Jason then spent the next 10 years working for two of the largest foundations in the Rocky Mountain West, serving as the program officer for education at Daniels Fund from 2005 to 2009, and before that, a Senior Fellow at El Pomar Foundation from 2001 to 2005. Jason is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. He lives in Denver, Colorado.