Meet Our Associates

Meet some of our Associates...

Our company has a consortium of highly experienced professional consultants available for interim leadership or specialized consulting. They are senior professionals who take special pleasure in using their many years of experience to guide others and solve transition issues.

Ralph I. Fine, LLB, B.A.
ED Mentoring, Governance, Non-Profit Start-ups, Fundraising, Strategic Planning.

Ralph is a highly experienced former corporate lawyer, former owner of Boston’s The Real Paper, former Chairman of the Finance Commission of the City of Boston, the founder of several non-profits, including Hemisphere Initiatives, a former executive director and Interim Executive Director of several major national non-profits, including the Nobel prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and the Washington Office on Latin America, and a distinguished member of numerous for profit and non-profit Boards of Directors. Ralph’s current passion is mentoring promising new Executive Directors, helping new non-profits get established, and helping Boards of Directors improve governance policies and practices.  Ralph has a law degree from Columbia, and a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Gloria Franqui, MSSS

Professional Interim Executive Director. Specialist in turnaround services. Extensive success in creating nonprofit innovation, change, and growth.

Gloria has over 25 years of leadership, capacity building and management experience in the nonprofit sector. In addition to work as an IED she has held senior management positions in several human services and health organizations, including serving as chief executive officer. Gloria is passionately committed to assisting nonprofits. Her strengths include organizational assessment, transition leadership, governance, human resource management, strategic planning, executive coaching, and staff team building. Through her leadership, business growth strategies and management skills, she brings a proven ability to manage day-to-day operations during challenging periods of transition. Gloria successfully transformed a financially struggling human services organization in central MA reversing operating income losses that had mounted for 26 years. She returned the agency to neutral cash flow in three years. During ten-year tenure as CEO, Gloria   increased profitability and name recognition, resulting in a 215% growth in operating income. She also raised almost $10 million in contributions, state contracts and donated services. Gloria has also held several IED positions with area non-profit organizations, most recently for a Cambridge agency promoting childhood development. Gloria brings a high level of energy to all her endeavors helping nonprofits sharpen their focus, make more of their resources, and more effectively achieve their mission.  Gloria received her bachelors from Hunter College and a Masters of Science in Social Services from Boston University School of Social Work.

Alan Mann, Ph.D.
Interim Executive Director, Strategic Planning & Development – Arts Organizations

Alan has over 20 years with performing arts organizations at the executive level. He’s served as a General, Executive and Artistic Director. His work involved outreach and educational programs, marketing strategies and governance, relating to Officers and Committee Chairs, as well as negotiating contracts with artists within budget guidelines. He has implemented strategies for growth, fundraising and audience development. Alan’s hands-on history in restructuring presenting organizations involves knowledge of best practices in arts organizations, excellent communication skills, effective problem-solving, proven management and administrative skills. Previously artistic Director of Mississippi Opera and Opera Theater of Connecticut, Alan recently finished three and a half years as Executive Director of the Boston Chamber Music Society. His work has taken him from New York’s Lincoln Center to London’s West End to the Edinburgh Festival to the Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival to The Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy to New York’s Broadway. His directing assignments span traditional opera, contemporary opera, comic opera, musical theater and classic and modern theater. Alan received degrees in directing from The Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario and from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, London. He received his Ph.D. in Opera Production and Presentation from Andersen University.

PJ Blankenhorn
CEO, Strategic Planning and Implementation, Growth Strategy, Scaling and Replicating for Growth

PJ Blankenhorn is a seasoned executive and consultant with over 25 years experience in both entrepreneurial for-profit companies and non-profits. She enables non-profits to translate their vision into workable plans and to move from strategic ideas to tangible results by helping to identify organizational, technological, cultural and business model issues that are impeding success.   PJ brings direct experience in strategic planning and implementation, line management, marketing, finance, fundraising, and change management.  She was the Executive Director of the Boston Center for Adult Education, and a Senior Director at City Year. On the profit side, she was in senior management at Digital and Lotus and a strategy and reengineering consultant at CSC Index.  PJ holds an MBA from Boston University’s Graduate School of Management and a Masters in Educational Psychology from the University of Chicago.

Jeff Katz, MPA, MSW
CEO, COO; Special Projects in Fund Raising and Organizational Development

Jeff is a senior non-profit executive with extensive experience in program development, legislative affairs, public relations, and development activities. He was Executive Director of Adoption RI for ten years, and Research Fellow at Harvard’s JFK School for five years.
He is a nationally recognized expert on foster care and adoption, with many publications in the press and national journals to his credit, and appearances on TV and radio. Also he has excellent skills in organizational development, non-profit management, and fundraising. Jeff has a Masters on Public Administration from Harvard, a Masters in Social Work from Boston University, and a B.A. from SUNY Albany.

Susan L. Davy
Finance & Administration, Turnaround Management, Construction Administration, & Institutional Master Planning

Susan is a senior nonprofit executive with over 30 years of experience in educational, cultural, and community-based nonprofit institutions, including some of the largest museums in New England. Her special expertise includes institutional financial analysis, modeling and budgeting, information technology services and facilities planning and construction project management as well as staff coaching and development. Susan served eight years as the VP of Finance and Administration at the New England Conservatory of Music, six years as Director of Finance and Administration at Peabody Essex Museum where she managed $100 million in net assets, a $16 million annual budget, and a $100 million capital budget related to the new combined museum, and three years as Director of Finance and Operations at Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in Boston. She also served for several years as the Executive Director of the Cambridge Montessori School. Susan gets special pleasure in coaching staff and creating lasting systems for financial stability. She received her Masters in Business Administration from George Mason University, her BA in American Studies from George Washington University, and a Teaching Diploma from

Fred Balfour, M.Ed., B.A.
COO, Special Projects in Technology, Operations, Web Site Development & Marketing

Fred is an accomplished manager and executive with over 35 years experience in managing businesses in rapidly changing environments, both non-profit and for profit. After getting his masters in education in the 90’s, he spent 10 years working for and then heading up nonprofits focused on national education reform. Previous to that, he managed national and international marketing groups and business units in high tech. A trained industrial engineer, he specializes in using technology in getting work done across time, organizations, and geography. Fred’s strengths are in project management, product marketing, web development and marketing, data bases and data management, Microsoft Office solutions and training, work process design, and getting disbursed groups to agreement. He develops easy-to-use computer solutions that improve productivity across the organization. He has a masters in education from Harvard and a masters in industrial engineering from Wayne State University.

Jean M. Muller, B.A.
Interim HR, HR Problem-solving, Team-Building for Organizational Excellence

Jean is a hands-on human resources professional who has helped both Fortune 500 companies and non-profit organizations large and small. She has held senior executive positions in such organizations as BlueCross and BlueShield of Massachusetts, and Litton/Datamedix. A results-oriented human resources consultant, she is technically competent in all functional areas of HR with success in building teams and reationships to meet organizational requirements. Jean has a B.A in Human Resource Management for Northeastern University.

D. Alison Buckser, MPH
Interim Executive Director, Health Care Program Development, Grant Writing  

Alison has over 10 years of health care policy and program design and implementation experience in several states. She is the author or co-author of seven major publications and research papers in community public health matters. Recently she has turned considerable talents to professional nonprofit interim executive management with NPT. She served for seven months as the IED of a Rhode Island English as a Second Language agency, where she revitalized the staff and helped the agency rebuild its core program to the extent that it won one of three awards given from the state. Her consulting skills include project development and implementation, grant writing and management, community development, advocacy, consensus-building, government relations, and policy analysis. Alison is looking for new opportunities to put these skills to work as an Interim Director. She has served on numerous nonprofit Boards and held important leadership positions in several. Alison received her B.A. from Brown University, and her Master in Public Health from the Yale University School of Medicine.

Don’t See What You Need?

NPT has membership in diverse professional consulting groups, and ties to many nonprofit consulting resources. We maintain contact with transition consultants throughout the country. Whatever your challenge, we can help you find the right consultant. Call us.