About Our Principal & Founder

Lemolo Bay Advisors works with select charitable organizations to meet the great challenges of our time. By helping nonprofit organizations better fulfill their charitable purposes, we hope to restore public confidence in America’s voluntary institutions and build a stronger, more inclusive civil society. 

I have worked in executive leadership positions at nonprofit organizations, charitable foundations, and for-profit businesses for over 25 years. I have written, taught, and consulted on a range of topics related to charity, fundraising, and philanthropy. Prior to all of that, I served honorably in the United States Marine Corps.  

I take great joy in seeing people and organizations improve. Relationships are at the heart of all charitable enterprises. No matter how much things change, charities will always be humane enterprises with people at their center. I enjoy working with people. 

Throughout my career, I have been a student of how people come together to achieve a common goal, how they breathe life into their big ideas, successfully or unsuccessfully, whether for charitable or business purposes. I am accomplished in helping others order their ideas into practical, successful enterprises. 

I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, where I spend as much time as possible outside cycling, hiking, and sailing. 

• I co-founded the philanthropic consulting firm American Philanthropic, LLC, with Jeremy Beer in 2009. I left the company in 2017. 

• I was recruited by CrossFit, Inc.’s, founder and owner to manage the global fitness enterprise as its Chief Executive Officer in 2017. I served in that role for three years prior to the company’s sale in 2020. 

• I served as president, director, and member of the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation based in Santa Barbara, California. During this time, I also served as a director and secretary of the Lillian S. Wells Foundation in Ft. Lauderdale and as a director of the CrossFit Foundation.

• Prior to working on the giving side of the philanthropic ledger, I worked in various executive leadership roles at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute in Wilmington, DE, including Executive Vice President and Vice President for Institutional Advancement. 

• I authored with Jeremy Beer The Forgotten Foundations of Fundraising: Practical Advice and Contrarian Wisdom for Nonprofit Leaders (Wiley, 2019). I’m  also author of Protecting Donor Intent: How to Define and Safeguard Your Philanthropic Intentions (Philanthropy Roundtable, 2012). You can see more of my publications at my personal website. 

• During graduate studies, I taught composition, sixteenth- and seventeenth-century literature, and Greek and Roman literature in the English department at Washington State University (where I received an M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature), and founded a public policy nonprofit (the Columbia Public Interest Policy Institute), in my native Washington State.

• I served honorably in the United States Marine Corps as a combat motorcycle operator in the Second Marine Division. 

• Recently, I have been teaching a range of college courses — servant leadership, conflict resolution, systems thinking, human relations within organizations, and business writing — in the Business & Technology Department at Olympic College and in the apprenticeship program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility in Bremerton, WA. 

You can email me directly at jeff[at]lemolobay.com