Charting Nonprofit Horizons: Reflecting on 2024 and Anticipating 2025: Not-for-Profit Organizations Conference

Elysa Gordon, Vice President, Community Impact, Hartford Foundation for Public Giving

Elysa joined the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving in 2011. She is a member of the Executive Leadership team, and her portfolio as Vice President, Community Impact, includes strategy development and oversight for all grantmaking, capacity building, learning and evaluation, partnerships, public policy, and HFPG Impact! Greater Hartford, the Foundation’s impact investing portfolio. Elysa’s career has focused on collaborative national and statewide efforts to advance opportunities for children and their families. Previously, as Assistant Child Advocate for the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate, Elysa shepherded reforms on behalf of youth in juvenile and adult prisons, residential treatment, and foster care. Elysa also served as Senior Policy Advisor for the New York State Chief Justice’s Commission on Justice for Children where she established and managed statewide court-based innovations to maximize the well-being of children in foster care and has held leadership positions at Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Bronx AIDS Consultation Services, providing services for individuals living with HIV/AIDS.

Gian-Carl Casa, President and CEO, CT Community Nonprofit Alliance

In July 2016 Gian-Carl Casa was selected as the first President and CEO of the CT Community Nonprofit Alliance (“The Alliance”), Connecticut’s statewide association of nonprofit organizations. He has led the effort to build The Alliance, so that it is now recognized as the voice of community nonprofits before the legislature, the state executive branch, the Congressional delegation and the media.

Before that he served for five and a half years as Undersecretary for Legislative Affairs at the state Office of Policy and Management. At OPM he was responsible for budget-related and other legislation, managed requests for state bond funding and was point person for public communications, working closely with the Governor’s office in all areas.

He also worked for over two decades at the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities, most recently as Directory of Public Policy and Advocacy, where he worked on many association-related activities and helped build the organization’s grassroots lobbying capacity.

He has a BA and MA in Political Science from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He has otherwise always lived in Connecticut.

Karla Fortunato, President, Connecticut Council for Philanthropy

Karla Fortunato is the president of the Connecticut Council for Philanthropy and a champion for the philanthropic sector. She has decades of experience in philanthropy, funder collaboration, systems change, public policy, and organizational development.

Prior to joining the Council in 2017, Karla served as director of the Health and Environmental Funders Network (HEFN) where she mobilized philanthropy nationally around solutions to environmental health and justice problems. Before that, she led policy research, communications, and campaigns for Health Care For All, a Massachusetts-based advocacy group best known for the passage of the 2006 health care insurance reform law. She served on the Health Leadership Circle of MomentUs, a national campaign for climate change solutions, and as a member of the Serving Communities Committee of the National Conversation on Public Health and Chemical Exposures. She currently serves on the State of Connecticut’s ESF #14 Long-term Recovery Committee and as a board member of the Connecticut Community Nonprofit Alliance.

Karla Fortunato received her Bachelor of Arts from the Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Virginia and earned her Master of Business Administration from George Washington University. She writes regularly, and has been published in Health Affairs, the Connecticut Mirror, and other publications.