About the Author

Joann Morgan Burstein, President of Nonprofit Board Advisors, specializes in board governance. With fifteen years of consulting and twenty-five years of board experience, she serves a diverse portfolio of clients from struggling grassroots nonprofits to established multimillion-dollar organizations. She bases her practice on the principle that good governance strengthens organizational performance.

Ms. Burstein divides her time between Denver and Philadelphia. Her leadership commitments over the years include service on the boards of an international women's association, independent school, women's foundation, AIDS project, city-wide corporate giving program, maternal substance abuse pilot, mayor's welfare reform initiative, and most recently, a maternal care coalition. As president of the boards of the Mile High Transplant Bank, Junior League of Denver, Metro Volunteers, and JLD Foundation, she led each organization with clarity of purpose and focus on the governing role.

Her career path encompasses work as a staffer for an inner city drug treatment program, a full-time mother, community volunteer, travel planner, fundraiser and consultant. She was employed as a hospital pharmacist at the Medical College of Virginia, staff facilitator and training coordinator at the Denver Museum of Natural History, and consulting associate for LaSalle University's Nonprofit Center in Philadelphia.

Ms. Burstein participates in national meetings and training courses, including BoardSource, John and Miriam Carver's Policy Governance Academy, and LaSalle's Nonprofit Center. For the past two years, she has devoted her time to the writing of Board Steps--the culmination of her resolve to design an easily understood governance system for nonprofit boards.