Announcing the New Leadership Team

Here's a special message from our new CEO, Samantha Kagel:

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Hi everyone, Samantha here,

In this next chapter at Ambitious Impact (AIM), I’m excited to share more about our growing leadership team. One of my first priorities after stepping into the CEO role was to build a strong executive team to carry out our ambitions. I’m thrilled to now announce two key additions to our C-team: Jacintha Baas (Chief Growth Officer) and Aidan Alexander (Chief Operating Officer), who I’m confident will drive excellence in our approach and outcomes.

As we look ahead, we’re focused on scaling AIM’s impact in two ways: First, by doing what we do best, better: strengthening and scaling our core Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program (CEIP), and second, by running experiments aimed at delivering 10x the impact of our standard approaches.

We know CEIP is highly impactful,  and we want to better understand what drives the best results so we can scale both the number of charities we launch and the average impact our charities deliver. Aidan will focus on this work, while Jacintha will focus on identifying and building the next set of high-impact opportunities beyond our flagship program.

Here’s a bit about each of them:

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Jacintha Baas, Chief Growth Officer

Jacintha trained as a sociologist but went on to found and scale a climate tech startup that landed her on the Forbes 30 Under 30 (and a variety of other prizes and recognitions). She’s been part of the impact-focused community for a while, has been a strategic advisor to a number of high-impact charities, and is both a Giving What We Can pledger and a Founders Pledge member.

Jacintha was hired at AIM a little over 2 years ago to explore ways for AIM to scale its impact 10x. She has since launched the Effective Giving incubation program and the Founding to Give program. As Chief Growth Officer, she’ll be responsible for AIM’s broader scaling and growth strategy. She’s always keen to hear from people in the community for their best pitches on what AIM could do to be even more impactful than it is right now.

Outside of work, Jacintha is always up for going bouldering, loves sharing feed-a-whole crowd vegan recipes, and is also great for evidence-based takes on pregnancy, birthing, and parenting.

Aidan Alexander, Chief Operating Officer

Aidan returns to AIM after co-founding FarmKind, a charity that came through our own incubation program. With FarmKind now established and entering a marketing-focused scale-up phase, Aidan is following his comparative advantage back to AIM — bringing first-hand founder experience to help attract and support the next generation of charity entrepreneurs.

Aidan’s previous stint at AIM was from 2022-2024, where he helped pilot the Impactful Grantmaking program and co-authored the first edition of its handbook, How to Launch a High-Impact Foundation, before going on to lead the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Program as Director of Programs. He began his career in management consulting at BCG and in strategy and operations at Uber.

As COO, Aidan will focus on scaling the impact of our flagship incubation program through some combination of more charities, better charities, and stronger feedback loops to understand what drives their success.

When he’s not working, Aidan is busy being a techno gremlin. Sometimes, you’ll catch him staring at people’s pets for just long enough that it starts to get a little weird.

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I’ve been fortunate to work with both Aidan and Jacintha over the past years (in fact, Aidan was the one who first hired me at CE — thanks for that!!), and feel immensely grateful and excited about what their leadership will unlock. Individually, they are two of the most altruistic, results-focused people I know, and together they bring a rare balance of speed and rigor that I’m confident will result in new levels of ambition and impact here at AIM.

Thank you for your support and for following our journey!

Warmly,

Samantha

CEO