Meet Amy, PACE’s New Director of Learning and Experimentation

As PACE welcomes two new staff members to our team, we are excited to introduce them to our members and partners. Their bios are on our website, but in the spirit of fellowship, we spent a few minutes getting to know them a little more, learning about their roles at PACE, and hearing their vision for philanthropy and democracy in 2020 and beyond.

Meet Amy McIsaac, PACE’s new Director of Learning and Experimentation.

What’s important for us to know about you?

One way to answer this is to share that civic engagement has been a lifelong passion of mine. I studied it in college (at Providence College’s Feinstein Institute for Public Service — go Friars!) and immediately after college, I did a service year as an AmeriCorps VISTA with LIFT in Washington, DC. I then pivoted to international service and led an organization that placed year-long volunteers in a community with smallholder farmers in rural Tanzania to revolutionize their business practices and drastically increase their family earnings. After a few years, I wanted to return to domestic service, so I took a role at ServiceNation (which became Service Year Alliance) to push forward a vision for America in which a service year is a common expectation and opportunity for all young Americans. Civic engagement has always been at the core of my career, and I am grateful I get to use the hours of my life pushing forward an idea that I so deeply believe in.

Another way to answer this is to share that my husband and I bartended the cocktail hour of our wedding, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about me.

The PACE team is already virtual, but what does your home office and life look like during this era of social distancing?

My husband and I have two young girls (2 years and 3 months), and we quarantined with other family members as well. My home office looks like a lot of juggling! We have a desk set up in every room, and based on who has work calls, which kid needs a nap, etc, we are in a constant rotation of work spaces. It’s a bit like musical chairs! As I write this, I am sitting at my favorite work spot — a custom desk made of reclaimed wood and repurposed iron drawers, where I have a framed picture of my happy place: Quay Street in Galway, Ireland.

What interests led you to PACE? How did your experience and career bring you here?

As I mentioned above, my career has always centered around civic engagement, most notably through a lens of service to country and community. What I did not mention is that my previous roles predominantly focused on philanthropy and fundraising, and after a decade of working with philanthropy in one capacity, I was interested and curious to explore philanthropy from another perspective. I had been leading a few projects for PACE over the previous two years (e.g. Civic Engagement Primer, Democracy Primer, Entrepreneurship Paper, etc). As PACE embarked on its new strategic plan in 2020, its emphasis on learning and experimentation was very intriguing and aligned with my experiences. We all agreed it felt very natural to join PACE’s team in a full-time role, and here I am!

What is your new role at PACE? Tell us about your responsibilities and how you expect to contribute to PACE’s mission.

I am serving as PACE’s Director of Learning and Experimentation, which is a new role at the organization. I will be developing PACE’s organizational learning agenda and the programmatic mechanisms to achieve it. In other words, I will work closely with PACE members to identify learning themes and objectives aligned with their interests and priorities, and then I’ll develop ways for that learning to occur. Sometimes that might look like events, webinars, or other programming, and sometimes that might look like a collaborative experiment. We will learn together! I’ll also take it to the next level by connecting our learning dots with larger civic trends and opportunities, and I will share our learnings on a regular basis to make sure we are contributing to the field as best as possible.

What are you most looking forward to in this role?

This might be stating the obvious, but I’m most looking forward to all the learning we will do together. I think it takes the quiet strength of humility to be an organization with a learning posture, and I am excited to be one of the architects making it happen. We are not simply interested in learning what is already out there and reflecting it back. Instead, we are eager to create new learnings and provide a significant “value add” to the field of civic philanthropy. What could be more exciting than that?!

Finally, 2020 is a pivotal year for philanthropy and democracy. What excites you about working at PACE this year?

The world feels chaotic and uncertain with COVID-19’s impact on our financial, healthcare, and other systems. No doubt, we cannot overlook its impact on our system of democracy. I believe that COVID-19 is ushering us into a new era, and this will mark the beginning of a new way we will operate in many parts of our lives, including our civic lives. Within these moments of rapid change lies great opportunity. If we care enough and we work with enough intention and purpose, we can use this moment to bend the arc of the moral universe, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, just a little bit closer to justice. This next era will have new challenges and require new leadership, and I am humbled and energized to have a seat at an important table as we move into this new future.

What’s your professional super power?

Someone once told me that if I had to describe what I’m good at in five words, they should be strategy, relationships, program development, reflecting, and laughing — though, technically, that’s six words!