About Leela
Leela de Souza Bransten recently concluded a decade of service as the Chief Development & Marketing Officer at College Track, a national organization serving students from low-income communities to graduate from college and to thrive in careers where people of color have been historically underrepresented. Prior to College Track, Leela held several positions in the private sector in strategy, marketing, communications, and sales. In addition to working at Genentech and McKinsey & Company, she was appointed to serve as a White House Fellow in the Clinton Administration. In the first chapter of her career, Leela was a principal ballet dancer with Hubbard Street Dance Company. As a first-generation college graduate, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago with a BA in Biopsychology and earned her MBA from Stanford University Graduate School of Business. While at Stanford, Leela was an academic tutor and mentor for middle school students in the I Have a Dream program in East Palo Alto. This work led to a 25-year relationship with four siblings, three of whom are now first-generation college graduates.
Why Leela supports Wave-Makers
I’m proud to be a Making Waves Education Foundation board member because I strongly believe that educational equity is one of the defining issues of our time, and our program model is delivering on that promise to students from low-income communities in order to achieve their full potential.
