Trellis Partners

About

Welcome to Trellis, your partners in stabilizing, strengthening, and scaling nonprofit enterprises.

We believe passionately that the social sector has an urgent and essential role in advancing the common good. Each social enterprise must possess a ready and resilient infrastructure for ongoing effectiveness.

Trellis Partners (re)defines infrastructure to include more than just business systems. A nonprofit enterprise should pay due attention to assure business systems are in alignment with program strategies, culture, and leadership.

Here’s what we bring to make that happen:

WE FACILITATE LEARNING. Change is learning; learning is change. We give teams the context for best practices and create conditions for organizational learning. We utilize adult learning and organization development principles to help teams understand organizational growth and change.

WE’RE PRACTITIONERS WITH UNPARALLELED EXPERIENCE. We are fluent in every department of social enterprises, but we do more than advise. With decades of experience driving positive change across major international and domestic social justice organizations, we bring unmatched expertise to the job.

WE (RE)DEFINE INFRASTRUCTURE. Resilience depends on the effectiveness of an organization’s core, and we assure business systems are in alignment with program strategies, culture, and leaderships. We help teams appreciate that infrastructure is about more than only business systems.

WE BRING COMPASSION TO CHANGE. Change is hard, but that’s not to say it can’t be managed with care. We bring a firm but compassionate approach to our work, preferring to make an inch of positive, sustainable progress per month than a foot of forced change.

But we know that building resilience and increasing effectiveness requires grit and a strong support system. That’s why we’re gathering the best of the best.

Are you ready to advance real change?

Founder + CEO

Anna Prow

Practitioner with intellectual chops. Collaborative mentor and advisor. Educator committed to organizational learning. Serious executive balanced by compassion and humor. Systems thinker with a growth mindset.

It is Anna’s unmatched experience and unrelenting belief in the power of our nonprofit sector that led her to found Trellis Partners to help nonprofits achieve strength from change and growth.

In notable executive positions with Center for American Progress, National Democratic Institute, Health Care Without Harm/Practice Greenhealth, Friends of the Earth US, the Enough Project at New Venture Fund, and Campaign Legal Center — as well as a volunteer leader for the Human Rights Campaign — Anna has partnered with pre-eminent civil society leaders to take their organizations to next level excellence.

She brings pedagogy and adult learning experience from career chapters as a public high school English teacher and corporate trainer for Anheuser-Busch. Anna served as a teacher trainer Peace Corps Volunteer and then as an academic director of School for International Training’s study abroad program, both in Madagascar. Her experience overseas also developed her as a cross-cultural communicator and helped her be resourceful and comfortable in any environment.

Anna finds opportunity in uncertainty. She provides constancy by ensuring succession plans so teams can sustain best practices that work for them. Most often described as candid, trustworthy, and kind, Anna has made it her life’s work to see that social enterprises possess the resilience to deliver maximum results.

​DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS + BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

Jacinth Planer

Steadfast, conscientious strategic partner. Service-minded leader and dedicated guide focused on staff interest and development.

Jacinth joined Trellis Partners because she shares Anna’s belief in the potential of nonprofits. She thinks the strongest ones build people up and strengthen communities on the inside and the outside. She also brings a focus on accountability, transparency, and effectiveness from her background in due diligence and journalism.

Jacinth has held positions with firms and international human rights nonprofits, including TDI Compliance LLC, Exiger Diligence LLC, the Enough Project and Sentry at New Venture Fund, and Public International Law and Policy Group. She has launched and managed editorial programs and developed the investigative research capacity of multiple teams. These initiatives have increased team collaboration and peer support while increasing quality in research and writing.

Jacinth began her career in journalism in college as a junior radio reporter in Senegal. She was then a Fulbright grantee studying journalism and communication in Morocco before she joined CNN, ultimately working in the network’s award-winning documentary and investigative unit.

Jacinth brings a steady hand and pragmatic approach to strengthening people, teams, and organizations. She most often leads as a partner and advocate of common interests shared by stakeholders.