Sharona Shuster

Sharona Shuster brings two decades of professional experience advancing gender equality and fostering the organizational development of national and international social enterprises.

Whether accelerating maternal health in East Africa and India with Ashoka, enabling ideologically diverse leaders to collaborate in tackling some of America’s biggest challenges at Convergence, teaching graduate students at Georgetown University, or expanding adolescent girls education by tripling Lide Haiti’s budget in less than three years, she empowers bold and innovative mission driven organizations to reach their highest impact and potential.

In 2020, Sharona founded Illuminate Coaching and Consulting, where she provides social impact consulting to nonprofits and leadership coaching for women. To the social impact consulting work, she brings a highly creative approach to strategy development, a talent for facilitating collaboration, and an expertise across multiple issue areas. Sharona also draws upon her many years of experience leading organizational learning, strategic planning, impact evaluation, fundraising, and communications with different non-profits.

As a coach focusing on women’s leadership development, Sharona has had the pleasure of coaching banking executives, corporate trainers working with Fortune 500 companies, and young women just embarking on their careers, focusing always on connection, compassion, and creativity to enable new ways of seeing, learning, and working.

Sharona has a Master’s degree in Education, Human Development and Psychology, from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and two teenagers and loves gardening, singing, and long walks in nature.