Jacob Harold is a social change strategist. He dreams of a society with institutions equal to the challenges of the Anthropocene. From 2012-2021 he served as President & CEO of GuideStar and co-founder of Candid. Fast Company called Candid “the definitive nonprofit transparency organization.” Candid was formed by the 2019 merger of GuideStar and Foundation Center. Each year, more than 20 million people use its data on nonprofits, grants, and social sector practice.

Earlier in his career, Harold led a $30 million Hewlett Foundation grantmaking initiative to build a 21st century infrastructure for smart giving. Beforehand, he worked as a consultant to nonprofits and foundations at Bridgespan and as a climate change campaigner, strategist, and organizer with the Packard Foundation, Rainforest Action Network, Greenpeace USA, and Green Corps. Harold earned an AB summa cum laude in ethics and intellectual history from Duke University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He has further training from MIT, Bain, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the Santa Fe Institute. Harold has been a term member at the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow at the Urban
Institute. Currently, he serves on the Board of Directors of US Climate Action Network and as Senior Advisor at Rewiring America.

His book on social change strategy, The Toolbox: Strategies for Crafting Social Impact, was published by Wiley in 2021. Harold lives in Washington, DC with his wife Carolyn Sufrin—a physician-anthropologist at Johns Hopkins—and their two sons.