Areas of Expertise
- Roles & Responsibilities
- Composition & Board Development
- Structure & Culture
- Board-Staff Relations
- Assessments
- Governance Design & Support
Nancy Lee is an independent consultant based in Northern California and has served as a Senior Governance Consultant for BoardSource. As a practicing attorney, Nancy brings a unique perspective to her role as a consultant to nonprofit organizations. Late in 2016, Nancy left “Big Law” and founded her own law firm, Nancy P. Lee, PC, as well as a consulting firm for nonprofit organizations, Compostela Consulting LLC.
Her legal work with nonprofits—principally public charities, private foundations, and trade associations—focuses on formation, governance, tax-exemption and compliance matters, and relationships between affiliated for-profit and nonprofit entities. She has represented clients in nonprofit governmental audits, mergers, asset sales, dissolutions, and all phases of the organizational lifecycle. Nancy’s extensive experience in nonprofit governance includes organizational structure and capacity building, bylaws, board and staff roles, responsibilities and relationships, and conflict of interest issues. She frequently provides presentations to clients and speaks to professional and community groups on these topics.
In 2012, Nancy became a BoardSource Certified Governance Trainer. Since that time, she has provided training, board self-assessments and development priorities, strategic planning facilitation, and general consulting services. She has also worked with large multinational corporations supporting the nonprofit leadership growth of cohorts of senior executives engaged in charitable activities.
Nancy has special training in implicit bias and matters of diversity, inclusion, and equity, and she has worked with boards and staff on these issues. She is also certified through UCLA’s Director Training and Certification Program, which is accredited by Institutional Shareholder Services, and has completed Commonfund Institute’s program on the investment management of endowment funds. She strives to provide practical advice to clients and has a particular understanding of the board member’s perspective as a result of having served on the boards of 20 local, statewide, and national nonprofit organizations, including as chair and chairs of numerous committees.
Nancy received a B.S. degree from the University of California, Berkeley; a juris doctor from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law; and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is licensed to practice law in the State of California.
Nancy specializes in:
- Board governance & organizational analysis
- Strategic planning
- Diversity, equity & inclusion
- Building a strong board
- Board-staff partnership
- Oversight & accountability