Team

Emily Rasmussen developed a passion for helping communities unlock economic opportunity through her work in microfinance in India, Kenya, and China. These were also the early days of crowdfunding, and she was inspired by how technology was democratizing access to capital from people globally for people globally. So she started to explore how crowdfunding principles could be applied to her work helping communities thrive – this ultimately led to a vision for a more purposeful, community-based giving experience that would transcend the transactional crowdfunding campaign.

After working in the nonprofit sector for several years, Emily teamed up with Jessan-Hutchinson Quillian and Chloe Moon, senior engineers from Google who had helped to launch Google’s Giving Week and build their giving platform. A few months later they launched the first version of Grapevine –a platform that helped everyday people to connect with experts to identify nonprofits that matched their passion.

At this time, a few Giving Circles discovered Grapevine. The team realized that their model was an even more engaging and effective way for people to discover nonprofits - through community. They also learned that these collaborative groups were bogged down by administrative challenges. In 2019, Grapevine launched a beta of a new platform that would address the administrative burden - pooling donations, communicating with members, providing tax-deductible donation receipts, transparent granting, and more. This allowed collaborative giving groups to set up their communities and start collecting donations in minutes.

Today, Grapevine is helping hundreds of groups around the country direct funds to thousands of nonprofits.

Our Team

Emily Rasmussen

Founder & CEO

Emily brings more than 10 years of financing for impact, nonprofit and social enterprise leadership experience to Grapevine. She was the founding Executive Director of NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, launched the Lincoln Center at the Movies global media initiative, and developed innovative financing models for impact at Enterprise Solutions to Poverty. Emily has consulted on event cinema for Disney Theatrical Group, taught Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at SUNY Purchase, and spent two years developing microfinance and fair trade programs in India. She is a board member of the Harvard Business School Women’s Association, a member of the LISC Emerging Leaders Council, the AfterArts group, NOVA Impact, and a founding member of UNTITLED, an arts & business innovation initiative. Previously, she was a professional ballet dancer and performed with the Pacific Northwest Ballet, among others. Emily holds a B.A. from Occidental College in Diplomacy, World Affairs, and Economics and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Arrel Gray

CTO

Arrel is a serial startup founder & CTO who built the Andreesen-Horowitz-backed Wonderschool, helping preschool teachers start early child care programs out of their homes, and two other startups that were acquired.

Jane Lee

Director of Growth Marketing

Jane has worked in nonprofit fundraising and marketing for over seven years. Before joining Grapevine, she worked at Donorly as a development consultant and helped a startup healthcare nonprofit abolish over $3 billion of medical debt. She also worked as a fundraiser for a national nonprofit promoting access to educational equity through scholarships.

Britt Gage

Operations Director

Britt Gage is the founder of of All Trades, a “generalists-as-a-service” operating partner for early stage startups. With over a decade of experience in startups across both consumer and B2B early stage organizations, she leads a collective of fellow generalists to bring operations and internal product management to mission-driven founders and teams.

Gabrielle Leith

Community Manager

Gabrielle is a community-builder with 10+ years of experience working in arts & culture, tech and media industries. Before joining the team at Grapevine, she worked as the community manager for Artery/Bramble and spent over six years as the manager of the Film Office at the Toronto International Film Festival. Her events have been featured in multiple publications, including The New York Times.

Brittney Montgomery

Customer Support & Success Manager

Brittney Montgomery has years of experience in customer support, including working at Cadence, Advekit, Charlotte's Web and Zoek. She oversees the Grapevine support team and develops daily operations to give you the tools and support you need to run your Giving Circle.

Kenya Moore

Community Support Specialist

Kenya has been a community organizer for over eight years, building bridges to bring seemingly disparate communities together for a greater purpose. Before joining Grapevine, she worked with various grassroots groups, organizations, non-profits, and corporations to develop sustainable models of community building; creating scholarship and training curriculum; as well as hosting workshops and community dialogue rooted in cultural humility practices.

Karen Tinuntung & the Kheer Team

Administrative Support Specialists

Karen has been with Grapevine for almost three years and part of the Kheer Solutions team - a company specializing in assisting businesses with outstanding virtual assistance since 2012. Together with other Kheer team members, Karen provides support for Grapevine with information gathering, customer support, admin accounting, outreach and more.

Andrés Bolocco

Full Stack Engineer

Andrés, also known as Ando, is a software engineer with 16 years experience across different industries in both service and product oriented companies. He enjoys tackling hard tasks and evolving the technology stack while building new features to make products grow successfully.

Mauricio Urraco

Full Stack Engineer

Mauricio is a software engineer at Grapevine. He has a systems engineering degree and over seven years of experience in diverse industries like consultancy, crypto, and shipping optimization, and thrives on solving complex challenges and driving efficiency in every project.

Juan Calou

Front End Engineer

Juan is an accomplished software engineer with over 20 years of experience in frontend development. Specializing in JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, he has honed his skills to create intuitive and user-friendly web applications. Juan's passion for coding and technology has driven him to stay at the forefront of industry trends, ensuring he remains well-versed in the latest tools and frameworks.

Jessan Hutchison-Quillian

Senior Advisor

Jessan combines engineering leadership with seven years experience in the nonprofit space, including chairing Social Justice Fund NW. After graduating Summa Cum Laude in Computer Science at 20, he helped build Google’s video chat products. He went on to co-found Google’s Giving Week, lead their giving platform, and launch their Donate button.

Chloe Moon

Technical Advisor

Chloe has over seven years of engineering experience in financial, donation, and nonprofit spaces. Before joining Grapevine, she worked on the Google Cloud Billing platform and the OneToday donation app. She later led frontend development for Google's donation platform and the Google for Nonprofits program.