Our History

Impact100 Nashville was established in the fall of 2014 when Founding President Jolene Skinner shared her prior experiences in the Impact100 Austin chapter with the women who would become the founding board of Impact100 Nashville: Mollie Lacher (past-president), Michele Herlein (past-president), Meghan Breinig, Trish Holliday, and Leah Willingham. The founding board of Impact100 Nashville built the infrastructure and enlisted the assistance of other amazing women in the community to make the dream of Impact100 Nashville a reality. Since its inception, Impact100 Nashville has empowered a diverse local group of women of all ages, stages in life, income levels, and backgrounds to come together to fund transformational grants of $100,000 in the Greater Nashville region comprised of the 10 counties including and surrounding Nashville (Cheatham, Davidson, Dickson, Maury, Montgomery, Robertson, Rutherford, Sumner, Williamson, Wilson). Through 2022, Impact100 Nashville has given $821,000 in grant funds to deserving non-profits.  We anticipate reaching the Million Dollar mark in 2023!

Through collaborative philanthropy, our mission is to build a dynamic and diverse membership of generous women who accelerate positive social change in the greater Nashville area.

For more information about how Impact100 started, see the Global council story.

 

The Impact100 Model

The Impact100 model is readily available to all communities who wish to implement it. The model is designed to empower women to see themselves as philanthropists and overcome the barriers women have historically faced in this arena. The model is designed for transformational grant-making within local communities, with a minimum grant size of $100,000.

At Least 100 Women
Come Together

Each Woman
Donates $1,000

$100,000
is donated to a
Local Charity

Focus Area

In 2022, Impact100 Nashville will be recognizing non-profit organizations that seek to end the cycle of any debilitating condition, including but not limited to homelessness, poverty, addiction, hunger, illiteracy, human trafficking, recidivism, etc. We are seeking to award these grants to non-profit organizations that offer creative and innovative services to their populations and are able to show how results of their services end the cycle for the communities they serve.

How it Works

The annual $1,000 donations of Impact100 Nashville members are pooled into a grant fund to be given away to nonprofit organizations serving the Greater Nashville area. The number and size of grants awarded are dependent on our membership, but our goal is to give incremental grants of $100,000 each year. Grant categories and amounts are announced in the Spring at “The Big Reveal” event, commencing our grants cycle. Nonprofit finalists are chosen by grant committees through a competitive application process, and grants are awarded based on a membership vote at our annual meeting. Every woman who gives $1,000 or more has one vote.

Janet Walls
President
Janet Walls
President

Janet is president and founder of Delta Blvd, a management consulting and executive coaching company she founded in 2007. Prior to starting Delta Blvd, Janet spent 27 years in the corporate world including roles as Chief Financial officer and VP of Operations. She also serves as a board member of OCLC, a global technology company and as adjunct professor at Vanderbilt University. Janet joined Impact100 Nashville in 2017.

President@nashville.impact100council.org

 

Ginger Duncan
Immediate Past President
Ginger Duncan
Immediate Past President

Ginger is a business owner who specializes in developing leaders to gain a competitive advantage and deliver sustainable business results. Ginger joined Impact 100-Nashville in 2017 with a belief in the strength of empowered women coming together to transform their community by pooling resources, developing partnerships, and investing in the future of Nashville.

info@nashville.impact100council.org

 

Tiffany Coursey
President Elect
Tiffany Coursey
President Elect

Tiffany Coursey, a Nashville native, joined Impact100 Nashville in 2018, where she immediately became involved with the grants committee. She was drawn to Impact100 Nashville because of both the collective impact the group has on the community and because of the amazing women she had the opportunity to meet. Tiffany leads Human Resources for Holladay Properties, where she is passionate about cultivating a culture that enriches lives inside and outside of the organization.

presidentelect@nashville.impact100council.org

 

Susan Levy
Secretary
Susan Levy
Secretary

Susan and her family relocated to the Nashville area from their hometown of Cincinnati in 2003. She retired from Ingram Marine Group in 2015 after a more than 40-year career in information technology. Impact100-Nashville provides Susan the perfect opportunity to both give back and pay forward as part of a group of good women collectively accomplishing great things for our community.

Secretary@nashville.impact100council.org

 

 

Tina Percy
Treasurer
Tina Percy
Treasurer

Tina is originally from St. George, Utah and has been a Tennessee resident since 2010. Tina works as an Accounts Receivable Manager in the Revenue Cycle department at a local health care company. She got involved with Impact100 Nashville through a friend.  She is excited to be part of a growing organization that both inspires and empowers women who want to make a significant difference in their community.  She is inspired by being involved in a group effort that makes an impact on the Nashville non-profit community.

finance@nashville.impact100council.org

 

Susan Groenwald
Marketing Director
Susan Groenwald
Marketing Director

Susan moved to Nashville in 2018 from her hometown of Chicago. She is a nurse, educator, and author who retired her position as president of Chamberlain University in August 2018. Susan joined Impact100-Nashville in February of 2018 to meet generous Nashville women, to learn more about her new city, and to contribute to the great work carried out by so many non-profit organizations in Nashville.

marketing@nashville.impact100council.org

 

 

Michele Herlein
Legacy Chair
Michele Herlein
Legacy Chair

Michele co-founded Impact100 Nashville in 2015. She was President from 2018 to 2021, doubling our membership to over 200 members. She continues to be dedicated to Impact100 Nashville because she loves combining philanthropic and financial power to create social change in our community. She is an Executive Vice President, Chief Administrative Officer for Barge Design Solutions and lives in Mt. Juliet with her husband Doug. She loves paddle boarding, yoga, and being with her children and grandchildren.

info@nashville.impact100council.org

 

Liz Miller
Events Chairperson
Liz Miller
Events Chairperson

Liz is a project management and marketing professional who has lived in Nashville for over 20 years.  She joined Impact100 Nashville in 2016 and has greatly enjoyed being a part of such a dynamic group of philanthropic women.  She is excited to watch the organization grow and to continue to learn about the work of so many incredible non-profits in Middle Tennessee.

events@nashville.impact100council.org

 

Lisa Bashinsky​​​​
Non-profit Community Liaison
Lisa Bashinsky​​​​
Non-profit Community Liaison

Lisa is a business attorney who has lived in Nashville for over 25 years. She fully supports any cause that fosters positive change in the community and has the potential to change lives for the better. She joined Impact100 in 2021 and has enjoyed meeting the many dynamic like-minded women within the organization and witnessing the results of their collective good work.

communityliaison@nashville.impact100council.org

Jill Pepper
Membership Retention and Engagement
Jill Pepper
Membership Retention and Engagement

Jill moved to the Nashville area in 1993 and is a Director at a Fortune 100 Healthcare company. She’s also a Certified Project Manager and is excited to utilize those skills while serving on the Impact100 Nashville board to further the objectives of the organization. Jill was drawn into Impact100 Nashville because it offers a unique, welcoming environment and is a perfect combination for women wanting philanthropy, networking and comradery on their own terms.

membership@nashville.impact100council.org

 

Rahwa Mahari
Membership Growth
Michele Nanna
Corporate Sponsorships
Michele Nanna
Corporate Sponsorships

Michele is a real estate professional and consultant in greater Nashville and southwest FL. She enjoyed a 25-year corporate career in business development and marketing with Fortune 500 and small, diverse companies in the Engineering/Architectural/Construction industry serving infrastructure markets for governmental agencies globally. She is passionate about helping clients to achieve their goals and realize results. This is the same commitment and purpose she brings to the Impact100 Board to strategically drive growth in corporate sponsorship and have fun working with like-minded women to serve our community. She is a certified yoga teacher and mindfulness advocate, world traveler, loves to hang out with her dog Cooper, and somehow ran 5 marathons.

sponsorship@nashville.impact100council.org

 

Melissa Russell
Data Analytics
Melissa Russell
Data Analytics

Melissa is a technology leader who specializes in Data Analytics. She manages a team of developers and analysts at a local healthcare company. Melissa became involved in Impact100 Nashville to be a part of the solution for middle Tennesseans in need. She’s been with Impact100 Nashville for four years and served on the grants committee for three of those years.

dataanalytics@nashville.impact100council.org

 

 

Beth Johnson
Grants Co-Chair
Beth Johnson
Grants Co-Chair

Beth is a Senior Investment Consultant at Mercer. She currently services endowment, foundation and family office clients with over $9 billion in aggregate assets under advisement. For these clients, Beth focuses on projects relating to asset allocation, investment manager selection, performance evaluation, fund operations, and governance.

Beth’s prior professional experience includes work as an Investment Director for Vanderbilt University’s endowment, where she was responsible for investments across traditional equities and bonds, marketable alternatives, oil and gas and private equity. She started her investment career as an Investment Analyst at Duke Management Company, managing investment projects across all asset classes for Duke University’s endowment office.

Throughout her career, Beth has remained active in her community, sitting on several not-for-profit boards of directors, previously serving as the Investment Committee Chair and then Chair of the Board for the Missouri Foundation for Health, a $1 billion healthcare foundation in St. Louis. She is also a previous recipient of the Foundation and Endowment Money Management’s Non-Profit Consultant of the Year Award.

grants@nashville.impact100council.org

Kristen Phillips
Grants Co-Chair
Kristen Phillips
Grants Co-Chair

Kristen Phillips, a Nashvillian since 2009, works in healthcare administration and has been a member of Impact Nashville since 2020. She immediately fell in love with the work of the grants committee for both the ability to support the amazing work by nonprofits in the Nashville community she loves, as well as the opportunity to meet and work with the supportive and driven women of Impact100 Nashville.

grants@nashville.impact100council.org